Court Opinion

ID: 9750180
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:28:45.241591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:03.614340
License: Public Domain

*153ALSOP, District Judge,
dissenting.
Today a majority of this court adopts a plan of congressional reapportionment which totally alters the basic configuration of congressional districts in the State of Minnesota as it has existed for twenty years. The majority bases its decision on what it describes as this court’s choice between the “two conflicting principles” of “protect[ing] incumbent Congressmen” or affording “equal representation to all regions of the State.” I cannot concur with the majority’s statement of this court’s duty, with the majority’s rationale, nor with its result.
The responsibility of this court is to fashion and promulgate a congressional redistricting plan for the State of Minnesota that does the following:
1. Comports with the constitutional requirements of equal representation for each citizen and makes certain that the vote of one Minnesota citizen is equal to that of every other, United States Constitution, Article I, § 2;
2. Is consistent with the apportionment policy of the State of Minnesota, White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. 783, 93 S.Ct. 2348, 37 L.Ed.2d 335 (1973); and
3. Conforms with the criteria for reapportionment as adopted by this court in its Order of December 29, 1981.
Fulfilling this responsibility does not, as the majority asserts, require a choice between “protect[ing] incumbent Congressmen” or affording “equal representation to all regions of the State.”
The plan adopted by the majority unquestionably makes drastic and constitutionally unnecessary changes in the existing districts established by the Minnesota Legislature in 1971. The majority’s plan creates four districts in the Twin Cities metropolitan area and four in the remainder of the State. The plan was chosen from among four plans submitted by the parties, a four-four plan created by the special masters, a minimal change plan1 created by the Special Masters, and two plans created by Judge Gerald W. Heaney. When compared with the plans submitted by the parties, the plan adopted most closely resembles the plan submitted by the DFL-controlled State Senate. Although its out-state boundaries closely correspond to the four-four plan prepared by the Masters, it contains significant differences in the metropolitan area. For the reasons set forth more fully below, I respectfully dissent to the plan adopted today by the majority and propose, as a better alternative, the Masters’ minimal change plan.2
Once the existing congressional apportionment plan was declared unconstitutional, this court unquestionably had broad power to fashion a constitutional plan; however, the remedial powers of an equity court are not unlimited. Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124, 161, 91 S.Ct. 1858, 1878, 29 L.Ed.2d 363 (1971).
Just as a federal district court, in the context of legislative reapportionment, should follow the policies and preferences of the State, as expressed in statutory and constitutional provisions or in the reapportionment plans proposed by the state legislature, whenever adherence to state policy does not detract from the requirements of the Federal Constitution, we hold that a district court should similarly honor state policies in the context of congressional reapportionment. In fashioning a reapportionment plan or in choosing among plans, a district court should not pre-empt the legislative task nor “intrude upon state policy any more than necessary.”
White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. at 795, 93 S.Ct. at 2354. Thus, the Supreme Court has made it clear that this court should adopt a reapportionment plan that respects State policy.
*154In White v. Weiser, the three-judge district court declared unconstitutional a Texas law (S.B.l.) providing for congressional redistricting based upon the 1970 census figures. The parties submitted two alternative plans for the district court to consider: Plan B, although cutting across more county lines, generally followed the district lines of S.B.l.; Plan C, using population as the only consideration, substantially disregarded the existing districts of S.B.l. The district court ordered the implementation of Plan C because it was more compact and contiguous.
The Supreme Court upheld the finding that S.B.l. was unconstitutional but reversed the district court as to which alternative plan should have been adopted. The rationale of the Court is directly applicable in this case, and thus is quoted here at length.
Plan B, as all parties concede, represented an attempt to adhere to the districting preferences of the state legislature while eliminating population variances. Indeed, Plan B achieved the goal of population equality to a greater extent than did Plan C. Despite the existence of Plan B, the District Court ordered implementation of Plan C, which, as conceded by all parties, ignored legislative districting policy and constructed districts solely on the basis of population considerations. The District Court erred in this choice. Given the alternatives, the court should not have imposed Plan C, with its very different political impact on the State. It should have implemented Plan B, which most clearly approximated the reapportionment plan of the state legislature, while satisfying constitutional requirements. The court said only that Plan C is “significantly more compact and contiguous” than Plan B. But both Plan B and Plan C feature contiguous districts, and, even if the districts in Plan C can be called more compact, the District Court’s preferences do not override whatever state goals were embodied in S.B.l and, derivatively, in Plan B. “The remedial powers of an equity court must be adequate to the task, but they are not unlimited. Here the District Court erred in so broadly brushing aside state apportionment policy without solid constitutional or equitable grounds for doing so.”
White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. at 796, 93 S.Ct. at 2355 (emphasis added).
Today the majority is also brushing aside State apportionment policy. Minnesota has had eight congressional districts for twenty years. The first congressional redistricting following the determination that Minnesota was entitled to eight districts occurred in 1961. See Laws 1961, 2d ex. session, ch. 2, §§ 1-9. Following the 1970 census, the Minnesota Legislature adopted the second redistricting plan for the eight districts, see Laws, 1971 ch. 897, which is the plan that was in effect at the time this lawsuit was filed. Minn.Stat. §§ 2.73-2.82 (1980). Each of the two plans was passed by the Minnesota House of Representatives and Senate and approved by the Governor. Neither was the subject of constitutional challenge.
A comparison of the 1961 and 1971 plans shows great similarities.3 Although modifications were made to reflect population shifts, the basic geographical makeup of the eight districts was maintained. It appears that the Minnesota Legislature followed existing lines wherever possible in creating the new districts in 1971.
A State apportionment policy to preserve existing congressional district lines can be readily derived from looking at three factors. First, the current congressional plan in effect at the time this lawsuit was filed was drafted by the Legislature and is of the same configuration as has been in effect for 20 years. It stands as the Legislature’s most recent statement of policy on the subject of *155congressional districts. Second, the existing plan appears to have been drafted by the Legislature in recognition of the previously existing districts. Finally, a minimal change plan has been recently passed by the DFL-controlled Minnesota House of Representatives with bipartisan support on a 104-24 vote.4 See Skolnick v. State Electoral Board of Illinois, 336 F.Supp. 839, 846 (N.D.Ill.1971) (the court should give deference to a redistricting plan passed by one chamber of the legislature with bipartisan support). These three factors taken together clearly demonstrate a State policy in congressional redistricting which, under the Supreme Court mandate in White, we must follow.
The rationale behind limiting a court’s equitable powers by the requirement that it not intrude upon State policy is to avoid even the appearance of arbitrariness or gerrymandering. In reapportionment,, “the court’s task is inevitably an exposed and sensitive one that must be accomplished circumspectly, and in a manner ‘free from any taint of arbitrariness or discrimination.’ ” Connor v. Finch, 431 U.S. 407, 415, 97 S.Ct. 1828, 1834, 52 L.Ed.2d 465 (1977).
In this case, the majority of the court has chosen to adopt an apportionment plan that is radically different from any plan ever in effect in this State. Even assuming that its adoption was not politically motivated, the plan will in all likelihood have radical political ramifications. See C. Backstrom, L. Robins & S. Eller, Issues in Gerrymandering: An Explanatory Measure of Partisan Gerrymandering Applied To Minnesota, 62 Minn.L.Rev. 1121, 1131 (1978); Connor v. Finch, 431 U.S. at 430, 97 S.Ct. at 1841 (Blackmun, joined by Burger; concurring). Such a result from a judicial body is inappropriate when that which causes it is unnecessary.
The best way for this court to have limited its entanglement in the politics of congressional reapportionment, would have been to use existing congressional district lines in adopting a new plan. “Where there is an established policy of respecting political or natural boundaries in districting then ... a court may best avoid any appearance of partisanship by using those boundaries as much as possible in its districting.” Id.
The United States Supreme Court has reversed court ordered reapportionment plans that intruded upon an established state policy. See, e.g., White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. 783, 93 S.Ct. 2348, 37 L.Ed.2d 335 (1973); Sixty-Seventh Minnesota State Senate v. Beens, 406 U.S. 187, 92 S.Ct. 1477, 32 L.Ed.2d 1 (1972); Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124, 91 S.Ct. 1858, 29 L.Ed.2d 363 (1971). Ten years ago, the Supreme Court overturned this court’s decision in Beens v. Erdahl, 336 F.Supp. 715 (D.Minn.1972), reducing the size of the Minnesota Legislature in its court-ordered plan. The Supreme Court had no difficulty in discerning the state’s policy as to the Legislature’s size and, because of that policy, held that this court was not justified in so drastically reducing the number of senators and representatives. Sixty-Seventh Minnesota State Senate v. Beens, 406 U.S. at 197, 92 S.Ct. at 1484.
In the case before us today, there similarly is no reason to make such a drastic change in the configuration of existing districts. The special Masters created a minimal change plan which meets the adopted criteria but also respects existing district boundaries.5 This plan has a minimal effect on the voters of this State in that it leaves all but approximately 300,000 of them in their current districts. The majority’s plan, however, moves innumerable voters into different districts of entirely new configurations. The court could have avoided doing unnecessary violence to the heart of existing districts by adopting a *156minimal change plan such as the one prepared for the court by the Masters. See Maryland Citizens Committee For Fair Congressional Redistricting v. Tawes, 253 F.Supp. 731, 734 (D.Md.1966).
As set forth in my concurrence in the companion case involving legislative reapportionment, LaComb v. Growe, 541 F. Supp. 160 (D.Minn.1982), there are legitimate differences of opinion as to whether or not incumbent residency may properly be considered in devising any judicial reapportionment plan. However, in my view, its use is inappropriate where the court has chosen not to publicly adopt incumbent residency as a stated criterion.
In the legislative reapportionment case, my fellow judges, forming a majority of this court, attempted to preserve constituency-legislator relations by drawing “district lines to place incumbent legislators in districts consisting largely of their former districts, or to avoid contests between present incumbents.” It is noteworthy that they have abandoned that standard in congressional redistricting. Indeed, in the congressional plan adopted by the majority, it appears that at least two out of the eight election contests will be between incumbent congressmen. Thus, of eight incumbents, at least four will be involved in incumbency races. If the majority had used incumbent residency to minimize incumbency contests in congressional redistricting, as was done in legislative redistricting, a minimal change plan would have been the logical choice. A minimal change plan leaves each incumbent congressman in his existing district and does so without changing the constituency of the district to an appreciable degree. The plan adopted by the majority effectively destroys existing constituency-representative relations and results in “contests between present incumbents.”
In the context of congressional reapportionment, the Supreme Court has intimated that in considering the constitutionality of a plan, it is proper to consider whether the plan promotes “ ‘constituency-representative relations,’ a policy frankly aimed at maintaining existing relationships between incumbent congressmen and their constituents and preserving the seniority the members of the state’s delegation have achieved in the United States House of Representatives.” White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. at 791, 93 S.Ct. at 2352. The majority’s plan does neither; a minimal change plan does both.
The rationale advanced by the majority in support of its apportionment plan cannot withstand close analysis.
The first reason given for adopting a four-four plan is that such a plan “recognizes the fact, after the population changes of the last decade, that essentially one-half of the people of Minnesota live in the metropolitan area and one-half live in out-state Minnesota.” The majority correctly notes that the seven-county metropolitan area currently constitutes 48.7% of the State’s population. It should also be noted that, in 1970, the seven-county metropolitan area consisted of 49.3% of the State’s population.6 Furthermore, in 1971, with 49.3% of the State’s population in the metropolitan area, the State Legislature did not deem it necessary to adopt a congressional reapportionment plan based upon four metropolitan districts and four out-state districts. Yet, today, the majority attempts to premise the judicial establishment of such a plan on the basis of a proportional metropolitan population which is actually less than that which existed in 1970.
The majority contends that its plan “best advances the State’s Constitutional policy that districts be ‘of convenient contiguous territory.’ ” That portion of Minnesota Constitution, Article IV, Section 3, which is cited in support of that reason applies, by its terms, to State legislative districts, not to congressional districts.7
*157The majority also attempts to find a State statutory policy to recognize the metropolitan area as a distinct region of the State for purposes of reapportionment. However, none of the authorities cited for that proposition relate in any way to congressional reapportionment. See Majority opinion at p. 148. In addition, the statutory references are to laws which either predated or were adopted the same year as the congressional reapportionment by this State’s Legislature in 1971. Clearly, any weight that might have been attached to those laws as an expression of State apportionment policy was lost when the Legislature itself did not recognize the metropolitan area in reapportioning the congressional districts. For these reasons, I remain convinced that the most clearly established State reapportionment policy is to follow existing congressional district lines to the fullest extent possible.
Finally, the majority contend that in adopting their plan “every effort was made to preserve rather than dilute the effective representation of people with like needs and concerns” as was done in the companion case, LaComb v. Growe, 541 F.Supp. 160 (D.Minn.1982). While I agree that such a rationale may be deserving of some weight in State legislative reapportionment, it is not so deserving in the context of congressional reapportionment,8 since “congressional districts are not so intertwined and freighted with strictly local interests as are state legislative districts.” White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. at 793, 93 S.Ct. at 2353.
By reason of the failure of the Minnesota Legislature to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to properly apportion this State’s congressional districts, the task has fallen to the judiciary and specifically to this court. This shift of responsibility, howéver, does not grant to the judiciary an unrestricted license to desecrate existing boundaries and ignore established State policy. The plan today adopted by the majority does just that. The result is a congressional reapportionment plan that is judicially unprecedented and constitutionally unnecessary.
I respectfully dissent.

*158

*159

*160

. A minimal change plan makes only minor changes in the existing districts in order to achieve population equality.

. A description and maps of the Masters’ minimal change plan are attached in Appendices D, E and F. [These appendices have been deleted for publication purposes.]

. See Figures 2 and 3 following the text of this opinion.

. The four-four plan submitted by the Senateintervenor passed the Senate by a 40-23 vote. The vote, however, was along strict party lines with only two Independent Republicans voting in favor, one of whom did so to assure IR representation on any conference committee.

. See Figure 4 following the text of this opinion.

. Based on the 1970 census data, the combined population of Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott and Washington Counties was 1,874,612 and the population of the State was 3,806,103.

. Minnesota Constitution, Article IV, Section 3, reads as follows:
At its first session after each enumeration of the inhabitants of this state made by the *157authority of the United States, the legislature shall have the power to prescribe the bounds of congressional and legislative districts. Senators shall be chosen by single districts of convenient contiguous territory. No representative district shall be divided in the formation of a senate district. The senate districts shall be numbered in a regular series. [Emphasis added.]

. A “dichotomy between the two lines of cases has consistently been maintained.” Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S. 315, 322, 93 S.Ct. 979, 984, 35 L.Ed.2d 320 (1973).