Court Opinion

ID: 9546959
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:38:33.375969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:05.359915
License: Public Domain

Justice LOHR
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The majority approves the Final Plan submitted by the Colorado Reapportionment Commission (“Commission”) for revising the senatorial and representative districts for the General Assembly of the State of Colorado based on the 1990 federal census, with certain exceptions. These exceptions consist of disapproval of the present division of Pitkin County between two house districts, disapproval of the Perry Park plan, and imposition of a requirement that technical corrections be made to the Larimer and Boulder County plans. Because I am unpersuaded that the Final Plan properly adheres to Colorado constitutional criteria in dividing the City of Westminster into seven house districts, I respectfully dissent in part to the majority opinion.1 I concur with the opinion in all other respects.
I.
Article V, § 48(l)(a), of the Colorado Constitution requires that “[ajfter each federal census of the United States, the senatorial districts and representative districts shall be established, revised, or altered, and the members of the senate and the house of representatives apportioned among them, by a Colorado reapportionment commission .... ” Sections 46 and 47 of article V of the Colorado Constitution prescribe the criteria by which the Commission is governed in discharging this important public responsibility.2 The constitutional criteria and their relative importance can be capsulized as follows:
The paramount criterion is substantial equality of population among the senate districts and among the house districts. Colo. Const. Art. V, § 46. Subordinated only to this requirement is the proscription contained in Colo. Const. Art. V, § 47(2) against the division of counties and cities among districts. Next in order of importance are the standards of compactness and minimum linear boundary distance found in Colo. Const. Art. V, § 47(1). The least weighty of the consti*202tutional requirements is the prescription for preservation of communities of interest. Colo. Const. Art. V, § 47(3). By its terms, this requirement is subordinated to the requirements of section 46 and the other requirements of section 47.
In re Reapportionment of the Colorado General Assembly, 647 P.2d 191, 200 n. 1 (Colo.1982) (Lohr, J., dissenting); accord id. at 193-94 (per curiam); maj. op. at 189-190. Although the various criteria have different levels of importance, each is of constitutional significance and must be given effect by the Commission.
This court too has a constitutionally assigned responsibility. We must review the plan submitted by the Commission and determine whether it complies with sections 46 and 47 of article V of the constitution. Colo. Const, art. VI, § 48(e). In discharging this responsibility, we recognize that the criteria of sections 46 and 47 “are to be viewed as a whole, as a set of firm but general guidelines which allow the Commission some discretion in application.” In re Reapportionment, 647 P.2d at 194. Our sole concern is with constitutional sufficiency. “The choice among alternative plans, each consistent with constitutional requirements, is for the Commission and not the Court.” Id.; accord id. at 200 (Lohr, J., dissenting); maj. op. at 189. Although we are cognizant of the difficulty and complexity of the Commission’s task, we cannot permit this to obscure the fact that it is the court’s duty and responsibility to test the Final Plan for constitutional sufficiency.
II.
I turn now to examination of house districts 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, and 62, which together encompass the entire City of Westminster. I conclude that the configuration of these districts is constitutionally deficient.
The City of Westminster is a home rule municipality situated in Adams and Jefferson Counties. It has a population of 74,625 according to the 1990 federal census. The population of the entire state of Colorado according to that same census is 3,294,394. Dividing that latter population by the sixty-five members of the Colorado house of representatives, the ideal house district would contain 50,683 persons. Therefore, Westminster must be divided into at least two house districts because its population exceeds the number that can be accommodated in one. The Commission, however, has divided the city among seven different house districts.3 Under section 47(2) of article V of the Colorado Constitution, “[wjithin counties whose territory is contained in more than one district of the same house, the number of cities and towns whose territory is contained in more than one district of the same house shall be as small as possible.” This language evidences an intent that the Commission, in apportioning the populations of counties, keep cities whole whenever possible.4 Thus, the fragmentation of Westminster into seven districts, instead of the two theoretically possible, substantially compromises the constitutional value of maintaining city integrity.
The division of the City of Westminster also severely compromises the preservation of communities of interest standard of section 47(3) of article V of the Colorado Constitution. Communities of interest are based on “ethnic, cultural, economic, trade area, geographic, and demographic factors.” Id. In no one of the seven dis*203tricts in which Westminster is included does the Westminster population make up a majority. Specifically, the Westminster population is divided among the seven districts as follows:
Westminster Total District
Population Population
District 31 0 50,546
District 33 10,000 51,050
District 34 9,985 51,419
District 35 21,654 49,491
District 27 2,448 51,756
District 29 14,960 51,677
District 62 15,578 51,721
To the extent that the City of Westminster constitutes a single community of interest, as presumably it does for some purposes based on the inclusion of its citizenry within a single governmental unit and the commonality of interests fostered thereby, the constitutional value of preserving communities of interest is compromised by the division of the city into separate districts. The Final Plan compounds this problem by not assigning that community of interest majority representation in any district.
In drawing the boundaries of house district 62, the Commission assigned little weight to the constitutional criteria of compactness and preserving communities of interest. 15,578 Westminster residents reside in district 62, which includes as well other parts of Jefferson County containing 12,573 residents, and all of Gilpin, Clear Creek, and Summit Counties. Gilpin is an eastern slope mountain county having a population of 3,070, with Central City as its county seat. Clear Creek is also an eastern slope mountain county of 7,619 persons, with its county seat in Georgetown. Summit County, with its county seat in Breckenridge, is located across the continental divide from the rest of the district and has 12,881 residents. District 62 has the sixth poorest rating among the sixty-five house districts under the Schwartzberg test for compactness and the tenth poorest rating under the Reoek test.5 Thus, this district rates at the very low end of the scale for compactness among all the districts in the state of Colorado. In addition, it combines an urban population in Westminster and nearby unincorporated Jefferson County with three small mountain counties. One of these counties is on the western slope. It cannot be doubted that the community of interest criterion has been severely compromised by inclusion of areas of such cultural, economic, trade area, geographic, and demographic diversity within a single district.
[T]he interests of the mountain communities and those of the suburbs in the metropolitan area are not the same and sometimes are in tension. Similarly, western slope and eastern slope citizens have divergent interests in some areas appropriate for legislative action. Mining, water, and tourism exemplify subjects in which the residents in [such a district] could be expected to have strongly held and widely disparate views. A [representative] predictably will be confronted with dilemmas in efforts to represent citizens with such different interests.
In re Reapportionment, 647 P.2d at 203 (Lohr, J., dissenting) (bracketed material substitutes “representative” for “senator”); see Colo. Const, art. V, § 47(3). The fact that preservation of communities of interest is lowest on the scale of constitu*204tional criteria does not justify the somewhat dismissive treatment it is accorded by the Commission in giving effect to the paramount criterion of substantial equality of population.
The Commission justifies the division of Westminster and the creation of an elongated and diverse district 62 by the necessity of creating house district 60, principally in the San Luis Valley,6 consistent with the requirements of the federal Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973 (1988), and with the substantial equality of population criterion of Article V, Section 46, of the Colorado Constitution. It then candidly admits that beginning from the boundaries of that district it moved north and west and that Westminster was subjected to the limited options that remained when this process encountered constraints resulting from the need to preserve minority communities of interest to the east in Adams County. The majority recognizes the effect that the Voting Rights Act and equal population requirement had on the design of the Final Plan. Maj. op. at 196. It is clear that the division of the City of Westminster was primarily driven by these concerns.
Certainly, the necessity to comply with federal constitutional and statutory requirements and the need to create districts of substantially equal population do impose limitations on the flexibility of the redistricting process. The Commission, however, offers no explanation of other options that were explored or why such options were inferior to the one selected. The process described is not the only way that the constraints of federal and paramount state constitutional requirements could be accommodated. The Commission could have adopted a plan less destructive of constitutional values in the Westminster area and made its compromises elsewhere. The Commission has not explained in more than a conclusory way why the plan adopted is superior to other possible plans.7 In the face of the serious incursion on constitutional values represented by the present plan and the absence of a satisfactory showing that it represents the most constitutionally sufficient alternative, I would disapprove the Final Plan as it relates to the City of Westminster. In absence of more detailed explanation from the Commission, our constitutional responsibilities require no less. If in exploring other alternatives or revisiting those originally considered, the Commission is convinced in good faith that the Final Plan represents the best implementation of the constitutional criteria available, I would not foreclose it from resubmitting the present plan together with enough data concerning other alternatives considered to enable us to make an informed judgment concerning the constitutional adequacy of the Final Plan for house districts 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35 and 62.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully concur in part and dissent in part to the opinion of the majority.

. I agree with Justice Quinn’s dissent to that same feature of the Final Plan, and join the section of his dissent addressing it.

. As the majority properly notes, federal constitutional and statutory criteria also play an important part in the redistricting process. See maj. op. at 189-190. The bases for my concerns about the Final Plan do not relate to satisfaction of those criteria.

. The city is divided among house districts 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, and 62. One of these districts, district 31, contains only a small portion of Westminster and includes no residents of the city.

. Arguably, the language of article V, § 47(2), applies specifically only to the situation where a county must be split and directs the Commission in that situation to ensure that no cities are split in the process of dividing the county. (The territory of both Adams and Jefferson Counties is contained in more than one district of the house of representatives; neither county is split within the City of Westminster.) Considered more broadly, however, this constitutional criterion expresses a general intent to maintain the integrity of cities and towns and should be read to disfavor dividing cities and towns under any circumstances except where necessary to satisfy criteria that are assigned greater constitutional significance.

. The compactness ratings for three of the seven house districts that include parts of the city of Westminster rank in the bottom one-third of all the districts under the Reock test, and compactness ratings for four of the Westminster districts rank in the bottom one-third of all districts according to the Schwartzberg test. These tests are explained in the majority opinion at 198-199.

. Not all of the counties contained in house district 60 are part of the San Luis Valley.

. I agree with Justice Quinn that it is the Commission’s burden to provide an adequate factual showing that a deviation from constitutional criteria was constitutionally necessary. Many objectors lack the resources available to the Commission to devise alternative plans. I therefore do not attach the significance that the majority does to the fact that objectors do not propose constitutionally superior alternatives. See maj. op. at 197.