Opinion ID: 1378366
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Assembly

Text: The present boundaries of Assembly districts were drawn by masters appointed by us in 1973 in Legislature v. Reinecke ( Reinecke IV ) (1973) 10 Cal.3d 396 [110 Cal. Rptr. 718, 516 P.2d 6]. We adopted as our plan these boundaries following a gubernatorial veto of one plan and the failure of the Legislature to adopt another. The present Assembly districts are based on 1970 census figures and, accordingly, do not accurately reflect recent population trends as disclosed by the 1980 census. While the majority accepts the contestants' view that the referendum stay cannot properly override one person, one vote principles, there is no irreconcilable conflict between those principles and the constitutionally mandated stay. First, nothing contained in article XXI (adopted in 1980) purports to immunize the Legislature's reapportionment statutes from the usual constitutional checks and balances upon the legislative process, including both the Governor's veto and a referendum challenge accompanied by the immediate stay of the operation of such statutes pending the voters' decision. Article XXI simply requires the Legislature to adopt a plan readjusting voting district boundaries in the year following each national census. Moreover, application of the people's review by the referendum process will not frustrate the purpose of article XXI so long as we retain, as we do, the authority to provide an interim, temporary plan pending that review as discussed below. Nor are federal one person, one vote principles irreconcilable with the people's right of referendum. As will be seen, the application of these principles need not be instant, immediate and absolute. Rather, of necessity, states are permitted reasonable flexibility in adopting and implementing their reapportionment plans, thus permitting reasonable delays attributable to referendum challenges. We have so held before under very similar circumstances in Reinecke I, supra, wherein we formulated a temporary reapportionment plan for the 1972 elections in which we specifically employed then existing legislative district boundaries despite their failure to comply with the constraints of one person, one vote principles. No different result is required in this case. In Reinecke I, the Legislature had adopted a current reapportionment plan, but the Governor had vetoed it, thereby creating the immediate need for some plan for the forthcoming elections. We expressly acknowledged that population shifts had occurred and that the present legislative and congressional apportionments no longer meet the one man, one vote requirement.... (6 Cal.3d, at p. 601.) Nonetheless, rather than temporarily use a vetoed, although current plan, or hastily attempt to prepare an entirely new one of our own without public participation, we specifically permitted the preexisting legislative boundaries to remain in effect for purposes of the 1972 elections. Speaking through then Chief Justice Wright, we said: We believe that it will be far less destructive of the integrity of the electoral process to allow the existing legislative districts, imperfect as they may be, to survive for an additional two years than for this court to accept, even temporarily, plans that are at best truncated products of the legislative process. [Citations.] (P. 602, italics added.) Our reasoning was clear and unmistakable. It should control the result in the case before us. Despite our express acknowledgment of one person, one vote principles, we held that a temporary relaxation of those goals as to legislative districts would be consistent with preserving the integrity of the electoral process. It is interesting that real parties have asserted, without contradiction, that the population variances in the present districts are less than those which we perpetuated in Reinecke I. It is equally clear that, in terms of the integrity of the electoral process, a reapportionment plan which is now subject to a referendum challenge qualified for the June 1982 Primary Election, is comparable to one which, although legislatively authored, has failed to receive the Governor's approval. In each instance the plan is inoperable and stayed. Because the ultimate sovereignty rests in the people, no reason appears for elevating analytically the Governor's veto power above the people's reserved referendum authority, given the independent constitutional foundation of each. Moreover, Reinecke I was fully consistent with federal cases which have held that the application of one person, one vote principles may be temporarily postponed while a state is proceeding in a good faith effort toward reapportionment. (See Ely v. Klahr (1971) 403 U.S. 108, 114-115 [29 L.Ed.2d 352, 356-357, 91 S.Ct. 1803]; Lucas v. Colorado Gen. Assembly (1964) 377 U.S. 713, 737 [12 L.Ed.2d 632, 647, 84 S.Ct. 1472]; Reynolds v. Sims (1964) 377 U.S. 533, 583-585 [12 L.Ed.2d 506, 539-541, 84 S.Ct. 1449]; Skolnick v. Illinois State Electoral Board (N.D.Ill. 1969) 307 F. Supp. 691, 697.) In Reynolds, the high court carefully explained that although decennial reapportionment would satisfy equal protection standards, the governing principle is that the states should adopt a reasonably conceived plan for periodic readjustment of legislative representation. While we do not intend to indicate that decennial reapportionment is a constitutional requisite, compliance with such an approach would clearly meet the minimal requirements for maintaining a reasonably current scheme of legislative representation. (Pp. 583-584 [12 L.Ed.2d pp. 539-540], italics added.) The precise language of the high court which has direct relevancy to the problems before us is as follows: ... under certain circumstances, such as where an impending election is imminent and a State's election machinery is already in progress, equitable considerations might justify a court in withholding the granting of immediately effective relief, in a legislative apportionment case, even though the existing apportionment scheme was found invalid. In awarding or withholding immediate relief, a court is entitled to and should consider the proximity of a forthcoming election and the mechanics and complexities of state election laws, and should act and rely upon general equitable principles. (P. 585 [12 L.Ed.2d p. 541].) In similar fashion, in the matters before us the pendency of a speedily qualified referendum challenge to a reapportionment plan which will be resolved by the people in just over four months likewise amply justifies temporary use of the existing legislative districts for the forthcoming elections. Here, an impending election is imminent and the state's election machinery is already in progress. Indeed, certain preelection filing deadlines have already been passed, and the Secretary of State and county clerks implore us to act speedily so as not further to disrupt the statutory election machinery. The matters before us are cases to which the foregoing Supreme Court language has precise and unique application. Those cases which are relied upon by contestants in support of the proposition that one person, one vote principles override the people's referendum right are plainly distinguishable. (See, e.g., Lucas v. Colorado Gen. Assembly, supra, 377 U.S. 713, 734-737 [12 L.Ed.2d 632, 645-647]; Silver v. Jordan (S.D.Cal. 1964) 241 F. Supp. 576, 580-583, affd. sub nom. Jordan v. Silver (1965) 381 U.S. 415, 419-420 [14 L.Ed.2d 689, 691-692, 85 S.Ct. 1572].) These cases quite properly hold that the people's approval (through an initiative or referendum) of a reapportionment plan which is violative of Baker v. Carr (1962) 369 U.S. 186 [7 L.Ed.2d 663, 82 S.Ct. 691], is constitutionally irrelevant and cannot itself sustain such a plan. Here, an entirely different question is presented, namely, are one person, one vote principles to be so strictly applied as to deny the people themselves their own right to approve or disapprove reapportionment legislation before such legislation takes effect? As we have seen on the highest authority, reasonable leeway is permitted in such a case to protect the people's exercise of their precious referendum right. Such a procedure is as soundly established in precedent as it is in principle. It is urged by the majority that it would be less disruptive of, and more deferential to, the legislative process were we to purport to acknowledge the vitality of the referendum process on the one hand, while at the same time adopting the very 1981 reapportionment statutes which are challenged and stayed as part of a court-ordered temporary plan for the 1982 elections. The referendum process, however, is necessarily a disruptive, undeferential procedure by which the people halt in their tracks the operation of duly enacted statutes. Nonetheless, the Constitution guarantees that the people's voice shall be both heard and obeyed. It clearly mandates the stay to preserve the effect of the people's will. Any attempt to circumvent such a stay in order to preserve the orderly conduct of elections in deference to the Legislature or the Governor, necessarily frustrates and defies the sovereign people. We should be ever mindful that those same democratic values which sustained the high court pronouncement of one person, one vote principles in Baker v. Carr, supra , also form the very foundation for the constitutionally authorized referendum and initiative. Nor should we under the guise of judicial restraint adopt the 1981 reapportionment statutes in the face of a qualified referendum challenge which has stayed those very statutes. In terms of judicial restraint, the choice before us in this case is similar to the choice we confronted in Reinecke I. As here, the choice in Reinecke I was between old, malapportioned districts and a new reapportionment plan that had been adopted by a majority of the state's elected legislative representatives. In Reinecke I, of course, the new districts were not effective because the Governor had vetoed the plan, while here the new districts are not effective because the referendum process has stayed the plan; in both instances, however, the legislative process contemplated by the California Constitution did not result in an effective reapportionment plan. In Reinecke I we did not view the adoption of the truncated legislative plan as a choice properly dictated by any considerations of judicial restraint even though the plan had been passed by a majority of the state's elected representatives and was closer to one person, one vote principles than the old districts. On the contrary, we emphasized: Only the most compelling considerations would impel us to disregard the solemn vetoes of the Governor and to adopt the plans passed by the Legislature as court plans, at least in the absence of a complete hearing, ... which would allow us to exercise a fully informed and independent judgment with respect to those plans. Insofar as reapportionment of the Legislature is concerned, we find no such compelling considerations. (6 Cal.3d, at p. 602.) Should we now accord less solemn weight to the people's proscription of the statutes than a Governor's veto? Not under any system in which the people are sovereign. In reaching our conclusion in Reinecke I, we implicitly recognized that our court's automatic adoption of a truncated or incomplete legislative proposal would not represent appropriate judicial deference to a product of the state's constitutionally contemplated legislative process which, as of then, was incomplete. Similarly, in the cases before us our adoption of the 1981 plans amounts to judicial intervention into that process, thereby undermining the checks and balances which our state Constitution has consciously built into the legislative scheme to guard against a tyranny of a temporary representative majority. In each instance, these checks and balances on the actions of the Legislature  the gubernatorial veto in Reinecke I, the reserved referendum power here  serve the important purpose of moderating the actions of a current majority of lawmakers, helping to ensure that the interests of a broad range of affected individuals are considered in the enactment of legislation. (See generally, The Federalist, No. LXXIII (Hamilton) (1942 ed.) Book II, pp. 72-74.) Moreover, it seems clear that these checks and balances are at least as significant with respect to reapportionment statutes as with respect to other legislation, for in the reapportionment context there is a particularly serious danger that narrow partisan considerations may be given undue weight by a current legislative majority at the expense of the general citizenry's broader interest in competitive districts and electorally responsive representatives. (See Reinecke IV, supra, 10 Cal.3d 396, 402-403, 416-417.) When a court accords automatic deference to a legislative plan that has been checked by one of the constitutionally designed checks and balances, it inevitably diminishes the salutary tempering effect served by the constitutional safeguard. Thus, for example, if we had automatically adopted the vetoed state legislative reapportionment in Reinecke I as an interim plan, we would have lessened the incentive or need of the majority party to take into account the interests of minority party or independent voters so as to secure the signature of the minority party Governor. Similarly, when in the present case we adopt the incomplete legislative plan despite the operation of the referendum stay provision, we inevitably reduce this check on self-serving political action that is provided by the referendum power. On the other hand, if we respect and give effect to the referendum provision, and if the Legislature recognizes that this power may be utilized by the people to prevent a narrowly partisan plan from taking effect, legislators in the future are more likely to attempt to ensure that the fairness of the plan they adopt is generally apparent to the public at large. That is one important purpose of the reserved referendum power. In sum, contrary to the majority's analysis, we do not exercise proper judicial restraint or appropriate deference to the legislative process when we ignore the constitutionally mandated stay and adopt the 1981 legislative redistricting plans. For all of the foregoing reasons, I conclude that the state Assembly boundaries which were adopted by us and based on our masters' plan, rather than the new challenged and stayed ones, should govern the 1982 elections. I emphasize, however, that I would not foreclose the Legislature, if it deems it practical, from adopting in good faith a reapportionment plan substantially different from that adopted in 1981, for purposes of the 1982 and subsequent elections. (See Reinecke I, supra, 6 Cal.3d, at pp. 602-604; Martin v. Smith (1959) 176 Cal. App.2d 115, 118-119 [1 Cal. Rptr. 307].)