Opinion ID: 6321625
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Splits of Political Subdivisions

Text: While the traditional core criterion of contiguity is very straight forward, it is less clear how to assess whether a plan has satisfied the requirement that it “not divide any county, city, incorporated town, borough, township, or ward, except where necessary to ensure equality of population.” LWV III, 181 A.3d at 1085. In practical terms, there are only a few political subdivisions which are necessary to split to comply with the maximum population of a district. Following the 2022 Census, the ideal population for Pennsylvania’s congressional districts is 764,865. Thus, only Philadelphia, Allegheny, and Montgomery Counties exceed this population, and the only city with an excess population is Philadelphia. Beyond these required divisions, mapmakers must divide the Commonwealth by grouping together whole political subdivisions with parts of others to achieve the necessary equal population. Inevitably, there are tradeoffs inherent in this process. A plan that prioritizes minimizing the number of county splits may well incur more municipality and ward splits to achieve the critical equal population of the district as a whole. To complicate matters further, some boroughs span a county line, requiring a mapmaker to choose potentially between splitting the county or the borough. Additionally, reasonable minds can differ as [J-20-2022] - 32 to whether it is preferable to split fewer total political subdivisions but to split some in multiple pieces. For example, Philadelphia’s population requires it to be split in at least three pieces, but some proposed plans split it into four pieces. Neither our constitution nor our caselaw provides guidance as to whether the unity of one type of political subdivision should be prioritized over that of another. Instead, we observe that these determinations are best left to the political branches, and thus, we do not rank the order of the importance of the splits. Instead, for the purpose of choosing a plan, we look wholistically across the plans for a minimization of the splits and for a justification for the splits to ensure that the decisions were based on valid redistricting criteria and not for vote dilution purposes. Turning back to the submitted plans, we emphasize that all of the plans are a far cry from the unconstitutional 2011 Plan which splintered the Commonwealth, including the division of twenty-eight counties. LWV II, 178 A.3d at 819. In contrast, the Carter Plan splits half as many counties. Indeed, Dr. Rodden testified that he prioritized maintaining the counties as whole entities and, when counties are split, avoiding splitting them multiple times. While we do not opine as to which division is preferable, we merely observe that the Carter Plan is one of the best in terms of keeping counties whole and falls within all other ranges of the plans submitted.27 Accordingly, we conclude that the Carter Plan is superior or comparable to all the other submitted plans on this criterion. 27 As discussed supra, experts disagree as to how to count the separation of a noncontiguous portion of Chester County from the rest of the county when a plan uses the border between Chester and Delaware Counties as a district boundary. Dr. DeFord’s comparison of the plans’ splits indicates that this split was included in the Carter Plan’s total of 14 divided counties, such that an argument could be made that the Carter Plan should actually be attributed with 13 splits, which would tie for the least split counties. In comparison, the other maps range from 13-17 counties, while the 2018 Plan divided 14. In terms of city splits, the Carter Plan splits Philadelphia into three pieces as is required by its population but does not fragment it into 4 pieces as do some maps. While [J-20-2022] - 33