Court Opinion

ID: 9429603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:27:19.656919+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:21.107668
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring.
In Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U. S. 725 (1983), we held that the reapportionment plan which had been adopted by New Jersey after the 1980 census was unconstitutional. On remand, the parties, by stipulation, asked the three-judge District Court to select which of a number of proposed redistricting plans should be employed in place of the plan which had been adjudicated unconstitutional. The District Court rejected the “Senate Plan,” and selected the “Forsythe Plan.” The District Court chose the For-sythe Plan because it achieved lower population deviations and more compact districts than the Senate Plan. Appellants claim that the District Court was obligated to accept the Senate Plan because it most closely conformed to the State’s original plan while eliminating unconstitutional population variances. They have, accordingly, filed an application for a stay of the District Court’s order, as well as an appeal. Since there is currently no apportionment plan in effect in New Jersey and elections are imminent, what appellants really seek is an injunction from this Court ordering use of the Senate Plan pending disposition of the appeal.
Once a constitutional violation has been found, a district court has broad discretion to fashion an appropriate remedy. E. g., Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 280-288 (1977). I do not believe there is a sufficient likelihood that the District Court abused that discretion by selecting the Forsythe Plan to justify the relief appellants seek. Because the Forsythe Plan contained lower population variances, it more completely redressed the constitutional violation. Nor was it an abuse of discretion to consider the fact that the Forsythe Plan created more compact districts; our previous opinion acknowledged that this is a legitimate consideration in reapportionment. See 462 U. S., at 740. We also stated that efforts to inhibit gerrymandering are a legitimate part of the reapportionment process, see id., at 734-735, n. 6; here the *911District Court found that the plan advocated by appellants constituted “an intentional gerrymander in favor of certain Democratic representatives.” Daggett v. Kimmelman, 580 F. Supp. 1259, 1262 (NJ 1984). While a district court should not unnecessarily ignore state policies when fashioning a remedy, White v. Weiser, 412 U. S. 783, 795-797 (1973), there the District Court rejected a plan implementing “decisions] made by the legislature in pursuit of what were deemed important state interests,” id., at 796, and did not explain why the plan it had rejected was “unconstitutional or even undesirable.” Id., at 797. Here the District Court identified legitimate considerations justifying its choice, and appellants have identified no state policy to which the District Court should have deferred that justifies the bizarre district lines in the original reapportionment plan. See 462 U. S., at 742-744, and n. 12.
Accordingly, I concur in the Court’s decision to deny the application for stay.