Opinion ID: 1660094
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: When two or more counties are required to make up sufficient population for a district, they shall be contiguous.

Text: 3. When any county has more than sufficient population to be entitled to a Representative or Representatives, he or they shall be apportioned to that county. For any surplus population, it may be joined in a district with any other county or counties. The court first held that the equal protection requirement took precedence, and any inconsistency therewith in the Texas Constitution is thereby vitiated. 471 S.W.2d at 377. When federal requirements were superimposed, as it were, upon the above provisions, the following effects upon the State Constitution were had: Clause 1: This would be effective only so long as county population was within the permissible limits of variance. Clause 2: When two or more counties are needed to make up a district, the only impairment of this mandate is that a county may be divided if to do so is necessary in order to comply with the Fourteenth Amendment. Clause 3: This was nullified. It became permissible to join the portion of a county in which there was surplus population not in a district wholly within the county, with contiguous area or another county to form a district. It was still necessary for a county to receive the number of districts to which its own population was entitled when the ideal population was equalled or exceeded. It was clear that the court interpreted the language of its Constitution to mean that counties must be dealt with as a whole, and that it allowed that meaning to be softened only to the extent necessary to comply with the federal constitution. The plan passed by the Texas Legislature in Smith v. Craddick, supra , cut the boundaries of 33 counties. Forty-three of one hundred fifty districts contained a portion of a county. As the court held: [Defendants] offered no evidence to establish that the wholesale cutting of county lines ... was either required or justified to comply with the one-man, one-vote decisions. The burden is on one attacking an act to establish its invalidity. [Citations omitted.] [Plaintiffs] proved conclusively that the statute fails to do what is required by the constitution in those respects discussed ... above. No presumption of validity remains in the face of that showing. If these districting requirements were excused by the requirements of equal representation, the [defendants] had the burden of presenting that evidence. They presented none. Id. at 378. The apportionment plan struck down in Clements v. Valles, supra , also sets out the way in which the division of counties failed to comply with the Smith v. Craddick guidelines. These are analogous to the Tennessee Act. The Texas Act cut 34 counties, 24 with surplus population and 10 with insufficient population to form a district. The plaintiffs presented numerous alternative plans which more closely followed county lines and still maintained permissible population deviations. In Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. 735, 93 S.Ct. 2321, 37 L.Ed.2d 298 (1973), the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a plan apportioning the Connecticut House. In Connecticut, towns rather than counties are the basic unit of local government. The state Constitution provides that no town shall be divided for the purpose of creating House districts, except where districts are formed wholly within the town. The Constitution further provides, as does our own, that the establishment of districts ... shall be consistent with federal constitutional standards. The House plan under scrutiny in Gaffney cut 47 boundary lines of the state's 169 towns. As in the case at bar, an action was brought seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against implementation of the plan. The complaint alleged that the plan erroneously applied the Fourteenth Amendment so as to achieve smaller deviations from population equality for the districts than were required under the Fourteenth Amendment. In achieving such unnecessary mathematical precision, the plan segmented an excessive number of towns in forming the districts. At the hearing in the federal district court, plaintiffs introduced three alternative apportionment plans that required fewer town-line cuts, although all three plans involved total deviations from population equality in excess of the 7.83% contained in the House plan. A fourth alternative plan was submitted which had a maximum variation of only 2.61%, but had no regard for the integrity of town lines. The district court invalidated the plan and enjoined its future use in elections. The Supreme Court stayed the district court's judgment and upheld the original plan, which violated the Connecticut Constitution's prohibition against crossing town lines. The Court made the following pertinent observations: ... From the very outset, we recognized that the apportionment task, dealing as it must with fundamental choices about the nature of representation [citation omitted], is primarily a political and legislative process... . ... . ... Politics and political considerations are inseparable from districting and apportionment... . .... ... [M]ultimember districts may be vulnerable, if racial or political groups have been fenced out of the political process and their voting strength invidiously minimized. 412 U.S. at 749, 753, 754, 93 S.Ct. at 2329, 2331, 2332, 37 L.Ed.2d at 310, 312. This case illustrates the point that, where necessary to meet federal constitutional requirements, a state constitutional provision may be violated to an extent, but still must be given due consideration and all possible effect.