Court Opinion

ID: 9785394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 21:39:52.044059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:23.525258
License: Public Domain

Fuld, J.
(dissenting): It has long been settled that the courts have a duty to see that the act of apportionment or reapportionment, the formation of senate or assembly districts, does not conflict with any mandate of the Constitution. (See Matter of Sherrill v. O’Brien, 188 N. Y. 185, 195 et seq.) In my opinion, the constitutional requirement that assembly districts be 6 6 of convenient and contiguous territory in as compact form as practicable” (N. Y. Const., art. III, § 5), has been plainly violated.
"While some irregularity in shape of a district may not alone condemn the proposed reapportionment, and while more than “ mere inspection of * * * maps ” may be necessary in cases where the lack of compactness is debatable (Matter of Dowling, 219 N. Y. 44, 59), here each of the four districts challenged is so peculiarly shaped, so many sided and multiangled, of such a bizarre character, as only to reflect the sort of proscribed gerrymandering at which the constitutional provision was directed. (See, e.g., Matter of Sherrill v. O’Brien, supra, 188 N. Y. 185.) In the Sherrill case (supra, 188 N. Y. 185) this court condemned a senate district, in shape, quite different from those in Dowling, but not unlike those here *276involved, for lack of compactness with these words (pp. 210-211)":
“ A reference to the diagram will show how grossly the provision of the Constitution in regard to compactness has been violated * * *. The reasons alleged .for the rambling territory comprising the thirteenth senate district with its boundaries of many sides and various angles are wholly immaterial and not recognized by the Constitution in the apportionment of senate districts. * * * Within the limits of a city entitled to many senators the requirements for compactness would seem to exclude all possibility of a district in the shape of the thirteenth senatorial district as shown on the diagram.”1
Petitioners met the burden of proof imposed upon them once it appeared that the districts were so irregularly and grotesquely shaped, so rambling in character, as to lack all semblance of compactness. It was then incumbent upon respondents, the public officials responsible for the creation of the districts and the only parties conversant with the facts and the reasons, if any, for the sort of districting effected, to come forward with some reasonable explanation for the character of the districts and show, if possible, that they were “in as compact form as practicable.”
The order of the Appellate Division should be reversed and that of Special Term reinstated.
Conway, Desmond, Dye and Froessel, JJ., concur with Lewis, Ch. J.; Van Voorhis, J., concurs in the result with respect to the fourth Assembly district in the eighteenth Senate district, but votes to reverse the order of the Appellate Division and reinstate that of Special Term with respect to the other Assembly districts involved for the reasons stated in the dissenting opinion by Fuld, J.; Fuld, J., dissents and votes to reverse in an opinion.
Order affirmed.
*277Shaded portion represents the Third Assembly District of the Thirteenth Senate District, one of the. four districts which the court is now upholding:

*278Shaded portion represents the Fifth Assembly Districts of the Tenth Senate District, another of the four districts

*279Shaded portion represents the district in Matter of Sherrill v. O’Brien which this court held violative of the constitutional provision (art. III, § 4) that each senate district shall be “in as compact form as practicable ” (188 N. Y., at pp. 205, 210-211):

. Attached as an Appendix to this opinion are diagrams of two of the four districts here in question, and, for purposes of easy comparison, the diagram of the senate district involved in the Sherrill case which appears at page 191 of 188 New York.