Court Opinion

ID: 9551748
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:58:36.420012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:28.594024
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, C. J.,
specially concurring.
I specially concur for the purpose of explaining why I find Mr. Justice McAllister’s position unacceptable and to register my disagreement witb tbe majority opinion on tbe disposition of tbe residency problem.
Justice McAllister has agreed with tbe majority that Article IV, § 6 is to be construed as giving tbe Secretary of State the power to create districts which do not adhere to county lines. But it is his position that the Secretary was intended to have tbe power to create districts in tbis manner only to tbe extent that it was absolutely essential to do so in order to meet federal constitutional requirements as established by tbe TJ. S. Supreme Court.
His position is that tbe county lines must be followed to the extent possible, even though in doing so the apportionment plan so devised would be subject to the criticism that it was not tbe most desirable plan because it included multi-member districts rather than single-member districts, it being clear that a single-member district plan is preferable.
If, as is conceded, tbe people intended to permit tbe Secretary to disregard county lines to meet United States constitutional requirements, it is difficult for me to see why they would not have intended, once *167county lines were necessary to be disregarded, that whoever is charged with devising a plan should devise the best possible plan to insure equal representation.
The dissenting opinion attaches to the integrity of county lines a significance which I am sure the people of this state did not intend them to have once it was necessary to disregard such lines for constitutional reasons. The unnecessarily -rigid interpretation adopted by the dissent is unacceptable to me. Therefore, I concur in the majority opinion.
The majority opinion leaves undecided the question of the residence requirement under the Secretary’s proposed plan. I think that we should decide the question because if the matter is not resolved those who wish to run for office to represent a so-called sub-district (which is in fact a district) will not know whether or not they must be residents of the “sub-district.”
The controlling section of our constitution is Article IV, § 8, which provides that the legislator shall be “* * * an inhabitant of the county or district whence he may be chosen.” It is apparent that this section contemplated a legislative district as consisting of either a single county or a combination of counties. Thus, residency in the county was required in the case of a single-county district, but residency in any county in the district was permissible in the case of multicounty districts. The purpose of Section 8 was to require the legislator to be an inhabitant of the district from which he was elected. Section 8 should be read to mean that the same principle applies where the district is an area less than a county. We should, therefore, hold that a legislator must be an inhabitant of the so-called “subdistrict” which he purports to represent.