Opinion ID: 2520871
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: When Colorado May Redistrict

Text: The second sentence of Article V, Section 44, says when redistricting may take place: [w]hen a new apportionment shall be made by congress. [10] a Colorado statute, enacted in 1999, defines new apportionment. ง 2-2-901(1)(a), 1 C.R.S. (2002). It says that a new apportionment occurs after each federal decennial census. Id. Moreover, the one-person, one-vote doctrine firmly requires redistricting after each national census. Georgia v. Ashcroft, ___ U.S. ___, ___ n. 2, 123 S.Ct. 2498, 2516 n. 2, 156 L.Ed.2d 428 (2003). Thus, the second sentence requires that redistricting must take place when there is a census: at least once per decade. The crucial question for us, however, is whether redistricting may occur more often than once per decade. The Secretary of State and General Assembly argue that the General Assembly may redistrict at any time, even more than once per decade. They do not interpret the second sentence to constrain the General Assembly in any way. We reject this construction. Our decision turns upon the interpretation of the second sentence in Article V, Section 44. In construing our constitution, our primary task is to give effect to the framers' intent. Grant v. People, 48 P.3d 543, 546-47 (Colo.2002). To ascertain this intent, we begin with the plain meaning of Section 44. Id. at 546. Then, by way of confirmation, we proceed to examine Section 44 in light of its context within the state constitution. Next, we review similar cases from other states, and find that they comport with our holding. Finally, we demonstrate that custom, history, and policy support our holding as well. The second sentence of Section 44 places a temporal restriction on redistricting. In the sentence [w]hen a new apportionment shall be made by Congress, the general assembly shall divide the state into congressional districts accordingly, the word when is used as a subordinating conjunction. It indicates the relationship of redistricting and apportionmentโredistricting shall take place when apportionment occurs. When, in this context, means just after the moment that, at any and every time that, or on condition that. Webster's Third New World International Dictionary of the English Language 2602 (Philip Babcock Gove ed., 1993) [hereinafter Webster's Dictionary ]. All of these definitions indicate that in Section 44, the word when means that redistricting may only occur after a new apportionment. Applying this language in the instant case: a new apportionment is a condition for redistricting; redistricting must take place any and every time a new apportionment occurs; and, redistricting must take place just after a new apportionment. Conversely, redistricting may not happen spontaneously or at the inducement of some other unspecified event; it must happen after and only after a new apportionment. Because section 2-2-901(1)(a) defines new apportionment to be synonymous with a federal census, redistricting must take place after and only after a census. Furthermore, as other states have found, when the constitution specifies a timeframe for redistricting, then, by implication, it forbids performing that task at other times. People ex rel. Mooney v. Hutchinson, 172 Ill. 486, 50 N.E. 599, 601 (1898) (Where there are provisions inserted by the people as to the time when a power shall be exercised, there is at least a strong presumption that it should be exercised at that time, and in the designated mode only; and such provisions must be regarded as limitations upon the power); Denney v. State ex rel. Basler, 144 Ind. 503, 42 N.E. 929, 931-32 (1896) (The fixing, too, by the constitution, of a time or a mode for the doing of an act, is, by necessary implication, a forbidding of any other time or mode for the doing of such act.). Here, Section 44 specifies the time for redistrictingโjust after a new apportionmentโand the logical conclusion is that redistricting is forbidden at other times. We also look to the text of Section 44 as it was originally written to confirm our interpretation of the current language. When ratified in 1876, Section 44 said that although there was then only one United States Representative from Colorado, the General Assembly should create more districts when the state received more seats. This clear mandate did not give the General Assembly unfettered authority to create new districts. It is absurd to imagine the General Assembly drawing districts before Congress gave a second seat in the House of Representatives. Instead, the second sentence requires that congressional apportionment be a necessary and logical trigger for the General Assembly to perform its task. Unfettered authority is especially unlikely in light of the limited authority the Colorado Constitution originally gave to Colorado's General Assembly. In its brief and during oral argument, the General Assembly strongly asserted that the 1974 changes in Section 44 were technical changes intended to eliminate obsolete language. They assure us that no substantive changes were made in Section 44. Thus, the second sentence of Section 44, as it was originally written, placed a temporal restriction on redistricting, and the temporal limitation remains in the most recent version of Section 44. To read the second sentence to mean otherwise would render it superfluous. The first sentence of Section 44 says: The General Assembly shall divide the state into as many congressional districts as there are representatives in congress ... for the election of one representative to congress from each district. The second sentence says: When a new apportionment shall be made by congress, the general assembly shall divide the state into congressional districts accordingly. If the second sentence did not place a time constraint upon redistricting, then all that would remain of this sentence would be a directive for the General Assembly to divide the state into single-member districtsโexactly what the first sentence in Section 44 already requires. We will not assume that the 1974 technical changes to Section 44 rendered the second sentence superfluous. See, e.g., Welby Gardens v. Adams County Bd. of Equalization, 71 P.3d 992, 995 (Colo.2003) (saying that [i]n construing a statute, interpretations that render statutory provisions superfluous should be avoided); Grant v. People, 48 P.3d 543, 547 (Colo.2002). Instead, we interpret Section 44 to mean that the General Assembly (or voters by initiative, or the courts) must create as many congressional districts as there are congressional representatives, and it must do so at a specific timeโafter a census. The framers' intent to limit the frequency of congressional redistricting is evident when the congressional redistricting language in the original 1876 Constitution is compared with the legislative redistricting language from 1876. Section 44 originally limited the timeframe for congressional redistricting, as it still does, to when a new apportionment shall be made by Congress. Section 47, however, originally said that [s]enatorial and representative districts may be altered from time to time, as public convenience may require.  Colo. Const. art. V., ง 47 (amended 1974) (emphasis added). From time to time means occasionally or once in a while. Webster's Dictionary at 2395. In Armstrong v. Mitten , this court assumed without deciding that this language allowed legislative redistricting more than once per census period. 95 Colo. 425, 428, 37 P.2d 757, 758 (1934). The contrast between these two sections clearly demonstrates that the framers intended to restrict the frequency of congressional redistricting to once per census. If the framers had intended to allow the General Assembly to draw the congressional districts at will, without temporal limitation, they would have used the from time to time language that they used in Section 47. Our interpretation is supported by history and custom. We have never been called upon to interpret Section 44 in the past because the General Assembly has never before drawn congressional districts more than once per decade. Just the opposite is true. As we discussed earlier in this opinion, the legislature has only redistricted six times when it should have done so thirteen times. [11] The legislature has been so reluctant to draw new districts that it allowed at-large elections for newly created seats in 1902-1912. [12] And it did not act at all during the four decades between 1921 and 1964. This reluctance to redistrict is even more significant in light of the fact that state political control has changed hands many times over the years. Since 1915, when the Colorado session laws began listing the party affiliation for the state legislators, [13] political control of the General Assembly and governorship has been in the hands of a single political party quite often. The state was entirely in Republican hands in 1915-16, 1921-22, 1925-26, 1943-46, 1951-54, 1963-64, 1967-74, 1999-2000, and 2003. And Colorado was controlled by Democrats in 1917-18, 1933-38, and 1957-62. Yet since 1915, the General Assembly only redistricted four times: 1921, 1964, 1971, and 1992. If the General Assembly has always understood the state constitution to allow redistricting more than once per decade, there should be some evidence that it exercised that power. Yet there is none. Even when the party in control changed, there was no new redistricting of congressional seats. This is the tradition in many other states as well. As one author put it, politicians understand that a census is a necessary prerequisite for redistricting: [T]here is no denying that when a new party gains a legislative majority in mid-decade it does not redistrict the state's congressional delegation right away but waits until the next Census. This is another of the rules of the game in legislative life, for everyone wants to avoid violent seesaws in policy. Hacker, Congressional Districting at 66. The 1999 General Assembly also interpreted the state constitution to limit congressional redistricting to once per decade when it enacted section 2-2-901. See Ch. 170, sec. 1, ง 2-2-901, 1999 Colo. Sess. Laws 559, 559-60. Subsection 2-2-901(1)(a) says that congressional redistricting occurs after each federal decennial census. Subsection 2-2-901(1)(b), regarding legislative redistricting, similarly states that legislative redistricting occurs after each federal census. It is undisputed that the state constitution now limits legislative redistricting to once every ten years, so we find it significant that the Colorado General Assembly used the same language to describe the timeframe for both legislative and congressional redistricting. [14] This statute is yet another indication that the Colorado Constitution requires congressional redistricting once and only once per decade. In sum, the plain language of Section 44, the General Assembly's past redistricting customs, and the General Assembly's own interpretation of Section 44 all demonstrate that the framers of the Colorado Constitution intended that congressional districts must only be drawn once per decade.