Court Opinion

ID: 9700251
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:17:19.044293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:05.950677
License: Public Domain

TAVARES, District Judge (dissenting in part):
I concur in every respect with the extremely able opinion written by District Judge PENCE, with the exception of that portion thereof contained in the next to the last paragraph under the heading “Apportionment Among Basic Island Units.”
With the deepest respect to my brother judges, I do not believe that the time will ever come when one of the four basic island units will be down so low in number of registered voters as to call for the application of the provision of the last clause of j[ 11 of § 4 of Article III of the Constitution reading,
“ * * * no basic island unit shall receive less than one member in each house.”
Theoretically, however, there could be a situation where the registered voter population of one of the basic island units would be so low that to give such unit even a single senator or representa*1302tive would be so unreasonable under all the circumstances as to render an apportionment based thereon invalid.
On the other hand, I don’t believe that we can say in advance that there might not exist a situation where the deficiency in number of registered voters in a basic island unit was so small, that under this and other circumstances, including the distance between the basic island units, we should in advance rule out entirely the possibility of a valid reapportionment under this provision.
Therefore, I respectfully dissent from the last mentioned portion of the majority opinion to the extent above stated.