Opinion ID: 2520871
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Colorado's Constitutional Restrictions on the General Assembly's Authority to Redistrict

Text: The Secretary of State and General Assembly argue that the Colorado Constitution grants the General Assembly unfettered power to redistrict. We are not persuaded. As discussed above, the federal Constitution, not the state constitution, is the source of the states' authority to redistrict, and the federal Constitution and federal statutes restrict the states' authority to redistrict. The Colorado Constitution can only further restrict the General Assembly's authority to draw congressional districts; it cannot expand it. We know this is true because the Colorado Constitution is not a grant of power, but an additional limitation upon all forms of state power, including the authority of the General Assembly. Reale v. Bd. of Real Estate Appraisers, 880 P.2d 1205, 1208 (Colo.1994) (The Colorado Constitution, unlike the federal Constitution, does not comprise a grant of but rather, a limitation on power.). Indeed, when our state constitution was ratified in 1876, there was a deep public distrust of the legislature due to Colorado's territorial history of scandal and corruption. Dale A. Oesterle & Richard B. Collins, The Colorado State Constitution: A Reference Guide 1-2, 20 n. 7 (2002). As a result, the delegates created a very detailed document specifically for the purpose of severely restricting the legislature's discretionary powers. Id. Given that the state constitution adds to the federal limitations on congressional redistricting, the crucial question is: Exactly how does Article V, Section 44, limit Colorado's authority to redistrict? We now turn to this question. Article V, Section 44, has always been in the Colorado Constitution. It originally said, in full: One Representative in the Congress of the United States shall be elected from the State at large at the first election under this constitution, and thereafter at such times and places and in such manner as may be prescribed by law. When a new apportionment shall be made by Congress, the general assembly shall divide the State into congressional districts accordingly. Colo. Const. art. V, ง 44. This original language meant that the state's single representative was to be elected from a state-wide district, but as the United States Congress assigned Colorado additional seats, the General Assembly was required to draw additional congressional districts. [9] In 1974, the General Assembly recommended and the people approved a change to Section 44. It now states, in full: The General Assembly shall divide the state into as many congressional districts as there are representatives in congress apportioned to this state by the congress of the United States for the election of one representative to congress from each district. When a new apportionment shall be made by congress, the general assembly shall divide the state into congressional districts accordingly. Colo. Const. art. V, ง 44. The first sentence states who must redistrictโthe General Assemblyโand what the General Assembly must doโcreate single-member congressional districts. The second sentence of Section 44 establishes when this redistricting shall take placeโafter a new congressional apportionment. Because the Attorney General's case turns upon the interpretation of Section 44, we will examine each of Section 44's sentences in turn.
The Secretary of State and the General Assembly argue that three words in the state constitution grant the General Assembly exclusive power to draw Colorado's congressional districts: General Assembly shall. At first blush, this logic seems persuasive; however, this argument is not consistent with existing Colorado law. Although the first sentence of Section 44 says that the General Assembly shall draw congressional districts, the term General Assembly, like the term legislature in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, has been interpreted broadly. The term General Assembly encompasses the entire legislative process, as well as voter initiatives and redistricting by court order. The term General Assembly does not simply refer to the lawmakers who must pass a bill. Instead, it is a shorthand method of referring to the entire standard lawmaking procedure set forth in the Colorado Constitution. Carstens, 543 F.Supp. at 79 (Congressional redistricting is a law-making function subject to the state's constitutional procedures.). These procedures require a majority quorum, approval by a committee, and reading of the bill at length on two different days in each house. See, e.g., Colo. Const. art. V, งง 11, 20 & 22. The standard lawmaking procedure includes passage by both houses of the legislature as well as the governor's signature or approval by inaction. Carstens, 543 F.Supp. at 79. With a two-thirds vote, the General Assembly may pass a redistricting bill over the governor's veto. Colo. Const. art. V, ง 39. Standard lawmaking procedure in Colorado also includes voter initiative. In 1934, this court upheld a legislative redistricting plan that was created by voter initiative and also rejected a subsequent plan adopted by the General Assembly. Armstrong v. Mitten, 95 Colo. 425, 430, 37 P.2d 757, 759 (1934). Armstrong involved state legislative redistricting, which now is performed by a special commission. At that time, however, the relevant section of the state constitution called for the General Assembly to revise and adjust the apportionment for senators and representatives during the session next following a census. Id. at 426-27, 37 P.2d at 758. The legislature failed to enact a redistricting plan in the session following the 1930 census. As a result, the voters initiated and passed a plan in 1932. Then, in 1933, the General Assembly enacted its own plan. In Armstrong, we held that the initiated plan was valid and enforceable. In so holding, we reasoned that [t]he people are sovereign and they created the General Assembly as their agent. Id. Consequently, we rejected a literal interpretation of the term General Assembly, and instead held that General Assembly broadly encompassed all legislative processes, including voter initiative. Armstrong's holding applies to congressional redistricting as well. The term General Assembly in Section 44 also encompasses the courts, but only in the special instance when the General Assembly fails to provide constitutional districts for an impending election. In an early case, In re Legislative Reapportionment, this court said: [I]t is manifest that the triunity of our government is not invaded by acceptance of this litigation for decision. If by reason of passage of time and changing conditions the reapportionment statute no longer serves its original purpose of securing to the voter the full constitutional value of his franchise, and the legislative branch fails to take appropriate restorative action, the doors of the courts must be open to him. 150 Colo. 380, 384-85, 374 P.2d 66, 68-69 (1962) (quoting Village of Ridgefield Park v. Bergen County Bd. of Taxation, 31 N.J. 420, 157 A.2d 829, 832 (1960)). Prior to the 1960s, the United States Supreme Court refused to interfere with redistricting issues. See, e.g., Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549, 66 S.Ct. 1198, 90 L.Ed. 1432 (1946). Instead, the Court deemed redistricting a political issue that was nonjusticiable. Id. In 1962, in Baker v. Carr , the United States Supreme Court reversed Colegrove and held that redistricting was a justiciable issue. 369 U.S. 186, 208-09, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). Accordingly, in In re Legislative Reapportionment, the Colorado Supreme Court said that it would draw districts, but only if the legislature failed to act. 150 Colo. at 385, 374 P.2d at 69. In the forty years since Baker v. Carr , court involvement in redistricting has become more common. Although courts continue to defer to the legislatures, the courts must sometimes act in order to enforce the one-person, one-vote doctrine. Indeed, Congress enacted 2 U.S.C. ง 2c specifically for the purpose of forcing courts to draw valid redistricting plans rather than resorting to at-large districts. Branch v. Smith, 538 U.S. 254, 123 S.Ct. 1429, 1439, 1445, 155 L.Ed.2d 407 (2003). Hence, courts are heavily involved in ensuring that all federal, state, and local districts satisfy the one-person, one-vote criteria. When a court is forced to draw congressional districts because the legislature has failed to do so, the court carries out the same duty the legislature would have. Redistricting involves prospective rules for elections, rather than a retrospective decision based on past events. Thus, when redistricting, the court's task closely resembles legislation. See Saul Zipkin, Judicial Redistricting and the Article I State Legislature, 103 Colum. L.Rev. 350, 379-80 (2003). In so doing, the court gathers information regarding alternative plans, hears expert advice, weighs alternatives, and ultimately adopts the plan it deems the best for the state. See generally, e.g., Beauprez v. Avalos, 42 P.3d 642 (Colo.2002). In the end, the court's plan is just as effective as a law passed by the legislature: it supercedes the prior districts, and remains in effect until legally replaced at a later date. In sum, the term General Assembly in the first sentence of Article V, Section 44, broadly encompasses the legislative process, the voter initiative, and judicial redistricting. Regardless of which body creates the congressional districts, these districts are equally valid. Hence, judicially created districts are no less effective than those created by the General Assembly.
The second sentence of Article V, Section 44, says when redistricting may take place: [w]hen a new apportionment shall be made by congress. [10] a Colorado statute, enacted in 1999, defines new apportionment. ง 2-2-901(1)(a), 1 C.R.S. (2002). It says that a new apportionment occurs after each federal decennial census. Id. Moreover, the one-person, one-vote doctrine firmly requires redistricting after each national census. Georgia v. Ashcroft, ___ U.S. ___, ___ n. 2, 123 S.Ct. 2498, 2516 n. 2, 156 L.Ed.2d 428 (2003). Thus, the second sentence requires that redistricting must take place when there is a census: at least once per decade. The crucial question for us, however, is whether redistricting may occur more often than once per decade. The Secretary of State and General Assembly argue that the General Assembly may redistrict at any time, even more than once per decade. They do not interpret the second sentence to constrain the General Assembly in any way. We reject this construction. Our decision turns upon the interpretation of the second sentence in Article V, Section 44. In construing our constitution, our primary task is to give effect to the framers' intent. Grant v. People, 48 P.3d 543, 546-47 (Colo.2002). To ascertain this intent, we begin with the plain meaning of Section 44. Id. at 546. Then, by way of confirmation, we proceed to examine Section 44 in light of its context within the state constitution. Next, we review similar cases from other states, and find that they comport with our holding. Finally, we demonstrate that custom, history, and policy support our holding as well. The second sentence of Section 44 places a temporal restriction on redistricting. In the sentence [w]hen a new apportionment shall be made by Congress, the general assembly shall divide the state into congressional districts accordingly, the word when is used as a subordinating conjunction. It indicates the relationship of redistricting and apportionmentโredistricting shall take place when apportionment occurs. When, in this context, means just after the moment that, at any and every time that, or on condition that. Webster's Third New World International Dictionary of the English Language 2602 (Philip Babcock Gove ed., 1993) [hereinafter Webster's Dictionary ]. All of these definitions indicate that in Section 44, the word when means that redistricting may only occur after a new apportionment. Applying this language in the instant case: a new apportionment is a condition for redistricting; redistricting must take place any and every time a new apportionment occurs; and, redistricting must take place just after a new apportionment. Conversely, redistricting may not happen spontaneously or at the inducement of some other unspecified event; it must happen after and only after a new apportionment. Because section 2-2-901(1)(a) defines new apportionment to be synonymous with a federal census, redistricting must take place after and only after a census. Furthermore, as other states have found, when the constitution specifies a timeframe for redistricting, then, by implication, it forbids performing that task at other times. People ex rel. Mooney v. Hutchinson, 172 Ill. 486, 50 N.E. 599, 601 (1898) (Where there are provisions inserted by the people as to the time when a power shall be exercised, there is at least a strong presumption that it should be exercised at that time, and in the designated mode only; and such provisions must be regarded as limitations upon the power); Denney v. State ex rel. Basler, 144 Ind. 503, 42 N.E. 929, 931-32 (1896) (The fixing, too, by the constitution, of a time or a mode for the doing of an act, is, by necessary implication, a forbidding of any other time or mode for the doing of such act.). Here, Section 44 specifies the time for redistrictingโjust after a new apportionmentโand the logical conclusion is that redistricting is forbidden at other times. We also look to the text of Section 44 as it was originally written to confirm our interpretation of the current language. When ratified in 1876, Section 44 said that although there was then only one United States Representative from Colorado, the General Assembly should create more districts when the state received more seats. This clear mandate did not give the General Assembly unfettered authority to create new districts. It is absurd to imagine the General Assembly drawing districts before Congress gave a second seat in the House of Representatives. Instead, the second sentence requires that congressional apportionment be a necessary and logical trigger for the General Assembly to perform its task. Unfettered authority is especially unlikely in light of the limited authority the Colorado Constitution originally gave to Colorado's General Assembly. In its brief and during oral argument, the General Assembly strongly asserted that the 1974 changes in Section 44 were technical changes intended to eliminate obsolete language. They assure us that no substantive changes were made in Section 44. Thus, the second sentence of Section 44, as it was originally written, placed a temporal restriction on redistricting, and the temporal limitation remains in the most recent version of Section 44. To read the second sentence to mean otherwise would render it superfluous. The first sentence of Section 44 says: The General Assembly shall divide the state into as many congressional districts as there are representatives in congress ... for the election of one representative to congress from each district. The second sentence says: When a new apportionment shall be made by congress, the general assembly shall divide the state into congressional districts accordingly. If the second sentence did not place a time constraint upon redistricting, then all that would remain of this sentence would be a directive for the General Assembly to divide the state into single-member districtsโexactly what the first sentence in Section 44 already requires. We will not assume that the 1974 technical changes to Section 44 rendered the second sentence superfluous. See, e.g., Welby Gardens v. Adams County Bd. of Equalization, 71 P.3d 992, 995 (Colo.2003) (saying that [i]n construing a statute, interpretations that render statutory provisions superfluous should be avoided); Grant v. People, 48 P.3d 543, 547 (Colo.2002). Instead, we interpret Section 44 to mean that the General Assembly (or voters by initiative, or the courts) must create as many congressional districts as there are congressional representatives, and it must do so at a specific timeโafter a census. The framers' intent to limit the frequency of congressional redistricting is evident when the congressional redistricting language in the original 1876 Constitution is compared with the legislative redistricting language from 1876. Section 44 originally limited the timeframe for congressional redistricting, as it still does, to when a new apportionment shall be made by Congress. Section 47, however, originally said that [s]enatorial and representative districts may be altered from time to time, as public convenience may require.  Colo. Const. art. V., ง 47 (amended 1974) (emphasis added). From time to time means occasionally or once in a while. Webster's Dictionary at 2395. In Armstrong v. Mitten , this court assumed without deciding that this language allowed legislative redistricting more than once per census period. 95 Colo. 425, 428, 37 P.2d 757, 758 (1934). The contrast between these two sections clearly demonstrates that the framers intended to restrict the frequency of congressional redistricting to once per census. If the framers had intended to allow the General Assembly to draw the congressional districts at will, without temporal limitation, they would have used the from time to time language that they used in Section 47. Our interpretation is supported by history and custom. We have never been called upon to interpret Section 44 in the past because the General Assembly has never before drawn congressional districts more than once per decade. Just the opposite is true. As we discussed earlier in this opinion, the legislature has only redistricted six times when it should have done so thirteen times. [11] The legislature has been so reluctant to draw new districts that it allowed at-large elections for newly created seats in 1902-1912. [12] And it did not act at all during the four decades between 1921 and 1964. This reluctance to redistrict is even more significant in light of the fact that state political control has changed hands many times over the years. Since 1915, when the Colorado session laws began listing the party affiliation for the state legislators, [13] political control of the General Assembly and governorship has been in the hands of a single political party quite often. The state was entirely in Republican hands in 1915-16, 1921-22, 1925-26, 1943-46, 1951-54, 1963-64, 1967-74, 1999-2000, and 2003. And Colorado was controlled by Democrats in 1917-18, 1933-38, and 1957-62. Yet since 1915, the General Assembly only redistricted four times: 1921, 1964, 1971, and 1992. If the General Assembly has always understood the state constitution to allow redistricting more than once per decade, there should be some evidence that it exercised that power. Yet there is none. Even when the party in control changed, there was no new redistricting of congressional seats. This is the tradition in many other states as well. As one author put it, politicians understand that a census is a necessary prerequisite for redistricting: [T]here is no denying that when a new party gains a legislative majority in mid-decade it does not redistrict the state's congressional delegation right away but waits until the next Census. This is another of the rules of the game in legislative life, for everyone wants to avoid violent seesaws in policy. Hacker, Congressional Districting at 66. The 1999 General Assembly also interpreted the state constitution to limit congressional redistricting to once per decade when it enacted section 2-2-901. See Ch. 170, sec. 1, ง 2-2-901, 1999 Colo. Sess. Laws 559, 559-60. Subsection 2-2-901(1)(a) says that congressional redistricting occurs after each federal decennial census. Subsection 2-2-901(1)(b), regarding legislative redistricting, similarly states that legislative redistricting occurs after each federal census. It is undisputed that the state constitution now limits legislative redistricting to once every ten years, so we find it significant that the Colorado General Assembly used the same language to describe the timeframe for both legislative and congressional redistricting. [14] This statute is yet another indication that the Colorado Constitution requires congressional redistricting once and only once per decade. In sum, the plain language of Section 44, the General Assembly's past redistricting customs, and the General Assembly's own interpretation of Section 44 all demonstrate that the framers of the Colorado Constitution intended that congressional districts must only be drawn once per decade.