Opinion ID: 1430068
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Bend and Deschutes County

Text: We first take up petitioner Schultz's attack on the division of the City of Bend and Deschutes County in chapter 261, because the difficult constitutional issues presented by the other petitioners may be moot if that feature requires rejection of the reapportionment measure. We conclude, however, that the measure survives this attack. Petitioner contends that the reapportionment of legislative districts in Eastern Oregon was designed to avoid election contests among incumbent legislators from the present districts, that for this purpose the measure sacrificed the political integrity and the community of interests of the City of Bend and Deschutes County, that an alternative plan would have respected the integrity of these communities at a lower deviation from the prescribed ratio of legislative seats to district populations, and that chapter 261 therefore violated ORS 188.010, supra, and the 14th amendment. The Attorney General, appearing for respondents Secretary of State and Legislative Assembly, counters that the reapportionment measure cannot be reviewed for compliance with ORS 188.010 in this proceeding, that even if ORS 188.010 may be a legal directive to the Secretary of State in preparing a reapportionment, it did not deprive the 1981 legislature of power to enact chapter 261 as a later statute, and that the reapportionment made in chapter 261 complies with 14th amendment standards of equal representation. We agree with the Attorney General's conclusion. As stated above, our original jurisdiction under art. IV, section 6(2) is to review a reapportionment measure for compliance with section 6(1), including such surrounding constitutional mandates as must be respected in the interpretation and application of subsection (1). [6] ORS 188.010 does not purport to be an authoritative interpretation of constitutionally mandated standards. Also, as respondents point out, the alternative districts favored by petitioner would have split more counties than chapter 261. With respect to petitioner's claim under the 14th amendment, we are of course governed by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Petitioner concedes that the degree to which the populations of districts created by chapter 261 deviate from the mathematically ideal ratios remains well within limits approved in the relevant decisions. Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. 735, 93 S.Ct. 2321, 37 L.Ed.2d 298 (1973), White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755, 93 S.Ct. 2332, 37 L.Ed.2d 314 (1973). He argues, however, that an alternative plan presented to the Legislative Assembly would have deviated even less from the idea of equal district populations, and he candidly urges us to depart from Gaffney v. Cummings, supra , to hold that the choice of the greater deviations must be supported by some more compelling state objective than to avoid election contests among incumbent legislators. [7] Even if we were to disagree with the Gaffney opinion about redistricting for political selfprotection, however, we are not free to hold that the federal Constitution forbids what the United States Supreme Court would sustain. We therefore hold that the legislature's division of the City of Bend and Deschutes County between two districts does not render chapter 261 unconstitutional.