Court Opinion

ID: 9755895
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:58:29.131532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:12.733698
License: Public Domain

COLBERT, V.C.J.,
with whom WATT, COMBS, and GURICH, JJ. join, concurring.
{1 By an election held May 26, 1964, the people of Oklahoma added a formula for redistricting in Section 9A of Article V of the Oklahoma Constitution. The formula provided for nineteen Senate districts with one Senator from each of the most populous counties along with twenty-nine two-county districts from the fifty-eight less populous counties. It also listed several social, geo*749graphic, and political factors to be considered by providing that "[iJn apportioning the State Senate, consideration shall be given to population, compactness, area, political units, historical precedents, economic and political interests, contiguous territory, and other major factors, to the extent feasible." Okla. Const. Art. V, § 9A.
12 Less than one month after that election, the United States Supreme Court handed down Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 588, 84 S.Ct. 1862, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964), which established that in order to pass constitutional muster, population rather than location must be the predominate consideration in the apportionment of electoral districts. Reynolds specifically rejected an approach in which population is the only factor, noting that exactness or precision is hardly a workable constitutional requirement." 877 U.S. at 577, 84 S.Ct. 1862. The Reynolds Court acknowledged the legitimate function of such factors as compactness, area, political units, historical precedents, and economic and political interests when it stated:
A State may legitimately desire to maintain the integrity of various political subdivisions, insofar as possible, and provide for compact districts of contiguous territory in designing a legislative apportionment scheme. - Valid considerations may underlie such aims. - Indisceriminate districting, without any regard for political subdivision or natural or historical boundary lines, may be little more than an open invitation to partisan gerrymandering. ... Whatever the means of accomplishment, the overriding objective must be substantial equality of population among the various districts, so that the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the State.
Id. at 578-579, 84 S.Ct. 1862.
T3 By today's decision, this Court strikes only the county-based aspect of the Section 9A formula to meet the requirement of Reynolds that population be the controlling criterion in evaluating a redistricting plan. The remaining "population apportionment formula" includes the Section 9A factors of "compactness, area, political units, historical precedents, economic and political interests, contiguous territory, and other major factors."
T 4 Today's decision recognizes that factors other than population can be the tool for achieving voter equality as well as the tool for its cireumyvention. The problem is not in the tool. Rather it is in its application. That is why those factors continue to be utilized by states in their constitutional and statutory redistricting schemes1 and by state and federal courts in evaluating whether a redistricting plan unconstitutionally furthers invidious discrimination. See, eg., Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 118 S.Ct. 1149, 122 L.Ed.2d 500 (1993) (applying several of the factors listed in Section 9A to a claim of racial gerrymandering). The proper focus of redistricting and judicial review of redistricting plans is voter equality rather than mathematical uniformity of population among the districts because "the achieving of fair and effective representation for all citizens is ... the basic aim of legislative apportionment." Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 565-566, 84 S.Ct. 1862.
T5 In this matter, no claim of gerrymandering based on race or economic status has been asserted. The claim is that political gerrymandering was involved in the redistricting. In 2004, the United States Supreme Court in Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 124 S.Ct. 1769, 158 L.Ed.2d 546 (2004), held all claims of political gerrymandering to be nonjusticiable in federal court because no judicially discernable and manageable standards for adjudicating such claims exist. The clear implication of Vieth is that if a state court has judicially discernable and manageable standards, it is justified in adjudicating claims of political gerrymandering. Those standards, however, are derived from a states statutory and/or constitutional scheme for redistricting. By contrast, claims of racial or economic gerrymandering are *750subject to strict scrutiny under the 14th Amendment.
T6 In this political gerrymandering claim, the problem is that the fact specific factors listed in Section 9A are not sufficient to provide discernable and manageable standards by which this Court may adjudicate a claim of political gerrymandering in an Article V, Section 11C review proceeding. However, the factors are sufficient to guide the District Court in making the fact determinations necessary to determine whether political gerrymandering has occurred or whether some form of voter discrimination has been perpetrated in contravention of the 14th Amendment or the Voting Rights Act.

. New Jersey, for example, has a special commission to establish Congressional redistricting. NJ. Const. Art. II, § 2. Iowa has very specific protections against gerrymandering. Iowa's redistricting standards mandate the use of a set of factors that include population, compactness, area, political units, political interests, and contiguous territory. Iowa Code § 42.4.