Opinion ID: 2154803
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Substantive Requirement of One Person/One Vote

Text: Under the State Constitution, there can be room for but a single constitutional ruleone voter, one vote. Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 382, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821 (1963) (Stewart, J., concurring). Our constitution requires therefore that the State Legislature be apportioned so that each person's vote carries as near equal weight as possible. See Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 588, 84 S.Ct. 1362 (Clark, J., concurring). [T]he overriding objective [of redistricting] must be substantial equality of population among the various [legislative] districts, so that the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the State. Id. at 579, 84 S.Ct. 1362. However, a State need not achieve absolute population equality with respect to state legislative districts. Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U.S. 725, 732-33, 103 S.Ct. 2653, 77 L.Ed.2d 133 (1983). The degree to which a state legislative district plan may vary from absolute population equality depends, in part, upon whether it is implemented by the legislature or by a court. State legislatures have more leeway than courts to devise redistricting plans that vary from absolute population equality. See Chapman v. Meier, 420 U.S. 1, 26-27, 95 S.Ct. 751, 42 L.Ed.2d 766 (1975). With respect to a court plan, any deviation from approximate population equality must be supported by enunciation of historically significant state policy or unique features. Id. at 26, 95 S.Ct. 751 (emphasis added). Absent persuasive justifications, a court-ordered redistricting plan of a state legislature must ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than de minimis variation. Id. at 26-27, 95 S.Ct. 751. The latitude in court-ordered plans to depart from population equality thus is considerably narrower than that accorded apportionments devised by state legislatures, and ... the burden of articulating special reasons for following ... a [state] policy in the face of substantial population inequalities is correspondingly higher. Connor, 431 U.S. at 419-20, 97 S.Ct. 1828. However, [n]either courts nor legislatures are furnished any specialized calipers that enable them to extract from the general language of the ... [constitution] the mathematical formula that establishes what range of percentage deviations is permissible, and what is not. Mahan, 410 U.S. at 329, 93 S.Ct. 979. The senate and senate president argue that because we are a state court, we should use the standard applied to state legislatures rather than the standard applied to federal district courts. We disagree. All courts called upon to make redistricting decisions are governed by the same measure of restraint. Unlike legislatures, courts engaged in redistricting primarily view the task through the lens of the one person/one vote principle and all other considerations are given less weight. See Connor, 431 U.S. at 415, 97 S.Ct. 1828. The framers in their wisdom entrusted this decennial exercise to the legislative branch because the give-and-take of the legislative process, involving as it does representatives elected by the people to make precisely these sorts of political and policy decisions, is preferable to any other. Jensen v. Wisconsin Elections Bd., 249 Wis.2d 706, 639 N.W.2d 537, 540 (2002). We believe, therefore, that we too must accomplish our task circumspectly, and in a manner free from any taint of arbitrariness or discrimination, Connor, 431 U.S. at 415, 97 S.Ct. 1828 (quotation omitted), and that the high standard that governs a federal court-enacted redistricting plan applies to any plan we adopt.