Court Opinion

ID: 9750172
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:26:35.103224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:03.521917
License: Public Domain

ALSOP, District Judge,
concurring.
Although I join in today’s opinion, I write separately to express my concerns with certain of the procedures utilized.
Following full written submissions, responsive comments by all parties, and oral arguments of counsel, the court on December 29, 1981 issued its order setting forth the criteria to be used in considering and adopting a plan of reapportionment. The order provided that all districts be single member, be compact, be contiguous, preserve the voting strength of minority populations, respect boundaries of political subdivisions, and contain a given degree of population equality.
The Masters appointed by this court have worked long and hard at a difficult and tedious undertaking. They each have sincerely attempted to be faithful to their task of objectively and independently applying the written guidelines provided to them in the process of laying out the boundaries of the legislative districts of the State. The plan as finalized comports with the objective criteria adopted by the court for use in formulating a reapportionment plan and, therefore, I concur in its adoption.
The order of December 29,1981 contained no mention that formulation of a plan by the court was to be determined in any way on the basis of the residences of incumbents or what “political impact” it might have. The absence of such criteria from the order was not inadvertent. The plaintiffs and intervenors Johnson, Savage and Wirtenan urged that the court’s criteria not include consideration of the residences of incumbents. In concurring with the criteria as adopted, I wrote separately to state my views that “any plan meeting the stated criteria should not be reviewed by any further standard unless or until a statement thereof has been adopted by a majority of the court.” No such statement was issued, however, until the reference in today’s order that incumbent residency was used in the interests of “constitutency-legislator relations” and “to avoid contests between present incumbents.”
Whether or not incumbent residency is a legitimate and proper consideration in a judicially devised redistricting plan is open to legitimate differences of view. See White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. 783, 791, 93 S.Ct. 2348, 2352, 37 L.Ed.2d 335 (1973); Burns v. Richardson, 384 U.S. 73, 89 n.16, 86 S.Ct. 1286, 1295, n.16, 16 L.Ed.2d 376 (1966); Skolnick v. State Electoral Board of Illinois, 336 F.Supp. 839, 843 (N.D.Ill.1971). Nevertheless, since the court consciously chose not to publicly adopt incumbent residency as a stated criterion, in my judgment its use was inappropriate.
Further, I cannot agree that consideration was given to residences of incumbents *168only after “initial district lines” were drawn. In at least two instances, suggestions or direction were given to the Masters as regards location of district boundaries or pairing of house districts based on incumbent residences before the drawing of “initial district lines.” Moreover, this judge was invited to participate in a review of district boundaries based on residences of incumbents at a time before the Masters’ “initial” lines were complete. Because of my view that any use of incumbent residency was inappropriate under the circumstances, I declined to participate in such a review at that time or thereafter.
In consideration of the adoption of criteria, some of the parties suggested that a final test be given to any plan proposed to make certain that it be “politically fair.” Various techniques have been proposed for the formulation of an objective standard of measurement for what one would normally consider to be a purely subjective concept. See C. Backstrom, L. Robins & S. Eller, Issues in Gerrymandering: An Exploratory Measure of Partisan Gerrymandering Applied to Minnesota, 62 Minn.L.Rev. 1121 (1978). However, here again this court in its criteria order of December 29, 1981 consciously chose not to adopt such a standard in this case. Yet, today’s opinion indicates that “adjustments made on the basis of incumbents’ residences appeared to be neutral in their political impact.” What standard was utilized in making that determination remains unknown. In my view, without some statement of the standard therefor, a judicial analysis of that consequence was inappropriate.
With these procedures, I must express my disagreement.