Opinion ID: 1151125
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: why we reject other plans

Text: Complete plans for each legislative body were submitted by seven different participants: the Independent Panel on Redistricting (established by the Governor); the Governor (containing modifications in certain areas of the Independent Panel submission); MALDEF; the Minority (Republican) Caucus of the Assembly for the Assembly, the Senate, and the Democratic Congressional Delegation; and the legislative bodies themselves for their respective houses (the Assembly and Senate as parties and the Democratic Congressional Delegation as to congressional plans.) In the case of both the Assembly and the Congress, three plans were submitted. Thus, we received 22 statewide plans in all, including 3 for the State Board of Equalization that are treated separately below. As previously noted, we do not recommend any of them for adoption. We discuss briefly our reasons below. First, however, proponents urge that special deference be given to the various plans passed by the Legislature but vetoed by the Governor. It is true that some federal cases have given special credence to this argument in the context of federal judicial deference to state policy (see, e.g. Upham v. Seamon (1982) 456 U.S. 37 [71 L.Ed.2d 725, 102 S.Ct. 1518]; McGhee v. Granville County, N.C. (4th Cir.1988) 860 F.2d 110, 115); but see, e.g., Garza v. County of Los Angeles, supra, 918 F.2d 763, 776, taking a contrary position). However, our Supreme Court rejected this position in Legislature v. Reinecke (1972) 6 Cal.3d 595 [99 Cal. Rptr. 481, 492 P.2d 385] ( Reinecke I ), refusing to give deference to plans that are at best truncated products of the legislative process (6 Cal.3d at p. 602). Thus, pursuant to controlling state law, we have evaluated the legislative submissions in the same manner as other submissions. [20] The Assembly passed three plans, each vetoed by the Governor, and submitted all three plans for our consideration. The Speaker of the Assembly made a presentation at our hearings and candidly explained that the reason for having three plans was that two of them represented an effort to obtain either a legislative compromise (an attempt to get certain Republican members of the Assembly to join in a veto override) or a gubernatorial compromise (an attempt to get the Governor to sign rather than veto one of the plans). We appreciated the candor and understand the dynamics of political compromise (albeit unsuccessful in this instance). However, the submission of three plans, each with calculated partisan political consequences (the details of which are unknown) creates a severe dilemma for us. We have no principled way to choose between the plans, especially knowing that we would be endorsing an unknown but intended political consequence by the choice we make. For this reason alone we would feel compelled to reject the plans. However, there is a stronger reason for rejecting the plans. We are charged with evaluating plans on the standards of the Act, the requirements of Article XXI of the state Constitution, and the criteria in Reinecke IV, supra, 10 Cal.3d 396. As to the Act, we have not analyzed the Assembly plans in sufficient detail to conclude whether or not they comply. [21] (Other parties have criticized the plans as being, at best, a minimal compliance with the spirit of the Act.) Whatever the case, we do not believe the plans submitted comply with the Article XXI and Reinecke IV ( supra, 10 Cal.3d 396) requirements of the integrity of geographic regions or contiguity as we interpret them. [22] Even a glance at the maps shows many misshapen districts which bypass contiguous populated territory to join distant areas of population together  in some instances without adequate roads or other means of communication. In many instances these districts are in areas where the Act has no practical impact, and no reasons are offered to explain the necessity of such departures from the Article XXI or Reinecke IV criteria. Two specific examples of the violation of Article XXI will suffice. In what the Assembly refers to as Plan A, District 15 ranges from eastern San Joaquin County and, bypassing Stockton, crosses through a narrow roadless section in the Sacramento River Delta region and over Mount Diablo to take in Walnut Creek and Orinda, just to the east of Oakland. In what is referred to as Plan B, District 5 consists of the northern part of Sacramento County, Placer County and the Lake Tahoe basin. It then goes down the east side of the Sierra Nevada and crosses into Madera County over the crest of the Sierra Nevada where no road exists. The populated area of Madera County is approximately 130 miles south of the other populated areas of the district. [23] In the absence of a cogent explanation of the necessity for formation of these particular districts, we believe they are contrary to the constitutional requirements of Article XXI. We would be unable to recommend plans containing them under any circumstances. [24] The submission of the Democratic Congressional Delegation suffers the same defects as do the plans submitted by the Assembly. First, three different plans, each with intended partisan consequences, were passed by the Legislature but vetoed by the Governor. All three were submitted to us leading to the same problem described above in connection with the Assembly plans. Second, the violations of Article XXI are even more egregious than those of the Assembly plans. One example will suffice. One congressional district (Dist. 21, Plan B) starts, as best we could tell, [25] somewhere north of Salinas, makes its way circuitously to the northern fringes of the City of Ventura, then crosses into the San Joaquin Valley to take in part of Bakersfield, and finally comes to rest in the Mojave Desert at the San Bernardino County line. Thus, one district takes in parts of almost every major geographical region of the state without even a hint of justification offered. [26] The submission of the Senate, a bipartisan effort, was closer to being acceptable than either the Assembly or congressional submissions. [27] We ultimately rejected the plan for several reasons, including but not limited to problems with whether the configurations were suitable for nesting; the peculiar configuration of several districts, such as Senate-proposed District 2 in the Sonoma and Solano County area. We also have a different assessment as to whether Senate-proposed Districts 9 and 12 complied sufficiently with the Act. [28] Even though we did not adopt the Senate plan, a number of districts proposed by us are similar, at least in broad outline, to those proposed by the Senate. We also conclude that we cannot accept plans submitted by others. The Governor's Independent Commission plan has much to recommend it, and several members of the commission are known to us as being fair-minded and public-spirited citizens who would try to do the best job possible without political favoritism. We would have been tempted to accept the plans submitted by the commission if we did not feel that the plans were inadequate in the treatment of minority communities. This aspect of the commission plans was the subject of substantial criticism by minority groups and by representatives of both the Democratic and Republican parties. The Governor's amendments attempted to correct these problems (and constituted, in our view, a tacit admission of the problem), but fell short of what we felt was appropriate. The MALDEF plans also have attractive elements, and we used some of the specific treatments of areas as a guide to our own construction of districts. [29] We disagree, ultimately, as to the extent to which Article XXI could be ignored in the quest to build minority districts (such as crossing mountain ranges in order to obtain additional minority population) and felt that the treatment of nonminority areas in their plans was not well thought out. [30] Finally, the Assembly Minority Caucus submitted a complete plan for each legislative body. Both the written and oral presentations were clear and were persuasive as to the merits of the plans. However, problems existed with the details of a number of the districts proposed. Since the plans were submitted to us late in the process and had not received any public comment, we were concerned that they might have political consequences unknown to us which we would not detect without the input of other interested parties. So, in the end, we felt it more appropriate to develop our own plans.