Court Opinion

ID: 9850103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:52:11.425549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:31.784128
License: Public Domain

HUNTLEY, Justice.
We have been petitioned, pursuant to our retained jurisdiction in Hellar v. Cenarrusa, 106 Idaho 571, 682 P.2d 524 (1984) (.Hellar II), to rule upon the constitutionality of the legislative reapportionment scheme enacted as H.B. AS 746 in the closing hours of the recent legislative session.
Our decision in Hellar II held in pertinent part that “... the 1984 election shall be conducted under [reapportionment] Plan 14-B ... unless the legislature enacts a constitutional alternative reapportionment plan,” and that “should an alternative plan be enacted and signed into law, this court may review said plan ... [and] will determine [its] constitutionality____”
The plaintiffs petition this court to declare the scheme of H.B. 746 in violation of the United States Constitution because (1) it has an impermissibly large population deviation (32.94%); and (2) the legislative districts located within three counties are gerrymandered by unnecessarily splitting neighborhoods and rural and urban populations to preserve incumbencies.
I.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
In ruling upon the petition before us, we are constrained by two guiding principles:
First, the apportionment of the legislature is, in the first instance, a matter of legislative discretion and judgment. The courts will not intervene unless a legislatively enacted plan fails to pass constitutional muster.
Second, this court, in determining whether a plan is violative of the United States Constitution, must follow pertinent rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States.
II.
EQUAL REPRESENTATION
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution requires that a state, in apportioning its legislature, “make an honest and good faith effort to construct districts ... as nearly of equal population as is practicable.” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 577, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 1389, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964). The legal research before us presented literally dozens of decisions of the United States Supreme Court and other Federal Courts which clearly compel us to declare H.B. 746 unconstitutional because it provides the people of some legislative districts with as much as 32.94% less voting power than the citizens of other districts.
In Brown v. Thomson, 462 U.S. 835, 103 S.Ct. 2690, 77 L.Ed.2d 214 (1983), the United States Supreme Court most recently summarized its previous reapportionment holdings with the following statement of the law which we are pledged to follow:
*589“Our decisions have established, as a general matter, that an apportionment plan with a maximum population deviation under 10% falls within this category of minor deviations. See, e.g., Connor v. Finch, 431 U.S. 407, 418, 52 L.Ed.2d 465, 97 S.Ct. 1828 [1835] (1977); White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755, 764, 37 L.Ed.2d 314, 93 S.Ct. 2332 [2338] (1973). A plan with larger disparities in population, however, creates a prima facie case of discrimination and therefore must be justified by the State. See Swann v. Adams, 385 U.S. 440, 444, 17 L.Ed.2d 501, 87 S.Ct. 569 [572] (1967) (‘De minim-is deviations are unavoidable, but variations of 30% among senate districts and 40% among house districts can hardly be deemed de minimis and none of our cases suggests that differences of this magnitude will be accepted, without a satisfactory explanation grounded on acceptable state policy.’) The ultimate inquiry, therefore, is whether the legislature’s plan ‘may reasonably be said to advance [a] rational state policy’ and, if so, ‘whether the population disparities among the districts that have resulted from the pursuit of this plan exceed constitutional limits.’ Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S. 315, 328, 35 L.Ed.2d 320, 93 S.Ct. 979 [987] (1973). (Emphasis supplied.)
As applied to H.B. 746 the conclusion must be that since the population deviation is 32.94% (not “under 10%”), the deviation is not in the “minor” category, but to the contrary, creates a prima facie case of discrimination and must be justified by the state.
The defendants herein argue that the grossly disparate population deviation of H.B. 746 can be justified because of Idaho’s terrain, its shape, and its relatively sparce population. That argument ignores the rule of law that such justifications will excuse a presumptively discriminatory population deviation (if it is not too k*rge to be excused) only where a good faith effort has been made in constructing districts “as nearly of equal population as practicable.” Reynolds v. Sims, supra, 377 U.S. at 577, 84 S.Ct. at 1389. The rule is set forth in Brown, supra, in footnote 6 to the majority opinion:
“6. In contrast, many of our prior decisions invalidating state apportionment plans were based on the lack of proof that deviations from population equality were the result of a good-faith application of legitimate districting criteria. See, e.g., Chapman v. Meier, 420 U.S. 1, 25, 42 L.Ed.2d 766, 95 S.Ct. 751 [764] (1975) (‘It is far from apparent that North Dakota policy currently requires or favors strict adherence to political lines____ Furthermore, a plan devised by [the special master] demonstrates that ... the policy of maintaining township lines [does not] preven[t] attaining a significantly lower population variance.’)', Kilgarlin v. Hill, 386 U.S. 120, 124, 17 L.Ed.2d 771, 87 S.Ct. 820 [823] (1967) (per curiam) (district court did not ‘demonstrate why or how respect for the integrity of county lines required the particular deviations’ or ‘articulate any satisfactory grounds for rejecting at least two other plans presented to the court, which respected county lines but which produced substantially smaller deviations’); Swann v. Adams, 385 U.S. 440, 445-446, 17 L.Ed.2d 501, 87 S.Ct. 569 [572-573] (1967) (no evidence presented that would justify the population disparities).” (Emphasis added.)
Similarly, it should be said of H.B. 746 that Idaho’s state constitutional mandate of maintaining the integrity of county boundaries, together with other policies articulated in our earlier decision in Hellar v. Cenarrusa, 104 Idaho 858, 664 P.2d 765 (1983) (Hellar I), do not prevent attaining a “significantly lower population variance” than 32.94%. Indeed, the record before us establishes no less than 10 alternative plans with population deviations of less than 10% and which serve the same state policies as those advanced in justification of the 32.94% deviation:
*590Plans Deviation
6A & 6B 8.76%
11A & 11B 9.55%
12A & 12B 9.01%
ISA & 13B 9.01%
14A & 14B 9.65%
Additionally the record establishes seven other plans (also with “B” variations) with deviations of less than 19% (making in all 12 “A” plans and 12 “B” plans with deviations under 19%). Both Plan 14-B and H.B. 746 advance the state policy of not dividing counties in the formation of legislative districts. Since both meet that requirement it cannot logically be argued that the scheme of H.B. 746 is necessary to preserve that state policy. The four dissenting Justices in Brown v. Thomson, supra, noted:
“We have warned that although maintenance of county or other political boundaries can justify small deviations, it cannot be allowed to negate the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. E.g., Connor, 431 U.S., at 419, 52 L.Ed.2d 465, 97 S.Ct. 1828 [at 1836].”
It is argued that language in our preceding decision in Hellar v. Cenarrusa, 106 Idaho 571, 682 P.2d 524 (1984) (Hellar II) suggests a determination of constitutionality for a plan with 32.94% population deviation. While it is true that we stated in dicta in Hellar II that a plan with an assumed population deviation of 41.3%, in light of Brown, supra, would not necessarily be unconstitutional where it was designed to accommodate Idaho’s “county-boundary” constitutional requirement and unique state policies and interest, such a supposition would certainly not apply where alternative plans exist which meet the same objectives and have below 10% deviations. It would be unreasonable to assume we intended to suggest our state legislature could ignore federal constitutional case law. The United States Supreme Court cases speak for themselves.
Defense counsel were requested to provide, if such existed, one single federal court decision sanctioning deviations in excess of 20% when plans with less than 10% were before the court. None were cited (our research indicates there are none). Thus, although we are most reluctant to declare H.B. 746 unconstitutional, the requirement that we apply the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause in a manner consistent with the decisions of the United States Supreme Court compels such a result.
The equal protection guarantee of the Idaho Constitution, contained in art. 1, § 2, see Langmeyer v. State, 104 Idaho 53, 54, 656 P.2d 114, 115 (1982), and the right of suffrage guarantee of Idaho Const, art. 1, § 19 likewise require that we hold H.B. 746 unconstitutional. The protections of Idaho’s constitution are no less compromised by a districting plan with 33% population deviation among districts in the face of equally well suited plans of less than a third that percentage than are the federal constitutional protections. Idaho’s Constitution stands on its own, and although we may look to the rulings of the federal courts on the United States constitution for guidance in interpreting our own state constitutional guarantees, we interpret a separate and in many respects independent constitution.
III.
GERRYMANDERING
Evidence (unrefuted) was presented of “gerrymandering” in three counties involving approximately one-third of the state’s legislative districts. The division of Ada County (Idaho’s most populous county) is as set forth on the map attached hereto as Appendix A. The shape of District 15 was described by plaintiffs’ counsel as “a fish” or “a sports car heading out of town.” The corridor connecting the north and south portions of District 14 is less than Vs mile wide. The affidavit of Susan Stacy (Director of Planning and Community Development for the City of Boise) compares the division of Ada County under Plan 14-B and H.B. 746 and provides some of the factual basis of the gerrymandering charge. It is noteworthy that either by pure chance or by design the scheme of *591H.B. 746 does not put one incumbent legislator against another in either Ada, Canyon or Twin Falls counties, the three counties as to which evidence of gerrymandering was presented. The Stacy affidavit states:
“The H.B. 746 plan shows the typical characteristics of political gerrymandering: shoe string connections, odd-shaped long narrow districts, dispersion of urban populations into larger rural areas, and the unnecessary splitting of established neighborhoods.”
Thus H.B. 746 is further tainted by its failure to provide coherent districts by the use of geographic and other obvious borders to the end that neighborhood and urban and rural populations will not be unnecessarily divided. Its “stretched” districts suggest the effects of an “indiscriminate districting, without any regard for political subdivisions or natural or historical boundary lines” which the United States Supreme Court saw as “an open invitation to partisan gerrymandering.” Reynolds v. Sims, supra, 377 U.S. at 578, 84 S.Ct. at 1390.
IV.
THE 1984 ELECTION
The 1984 legislative elections shall be conducted under Plan 14-B. Petitions were filed herein requesting modification of Plan 14-B by sub-districting of Canyon, Twin Falls, and Kootenai counties; however, the petitions have been withdrawn.
A petition has been filed on behalf of the Ada County legislative delegation requesting the elimination of the floterial district over Ada County and the formation of eight districts within the county in the place of the seven districts (plus a floterial district) provided by Plan 14-B. Such a modification at this late hour would cause further delay due to the time required for the taking of evidence and would complicate the election timetable; therefore the request is denied.
Costs and attorney fees on appeal to the plaintiffs.
DONALDSON, C.J., and BISTLINE, J., concur.
*592APPENDIX A
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