Court Opinion

ID: 9664164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:05:17.284197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:02.728932
License: Public Domain

T. E. Brennan, J.
(dissenting). The constitution creates a Commission on Legislative Apportionment. Four members are Republicans, four members are Democrats. Every ten years the Commission meets. Every ten years the Commission is unable to agree.
The constitution provides that if the Commission is unable to agree upon a plan of apportionment, its members may submit proposed plans to the Supreme Court.
The constitution then says,
“The supreme court shall determine which plan complies most accurately with the constitutional requirements and shall direct that it be adopted by the commission and published as provided in this section.” Const 1963, art 4, § 6.
Citing Federal uses, the majority concludes,
“In end analysis, mathematical exactitude re equality of population is the primary and controlling standard. As between competing plans with identical ‘equality of population’ factors, attention may then be focused upon other considerations such as compactness, shape, etc.”
*460Using this yardstick, the majority chooses a senate plan which subdivides 59 local units of government over a plan which splits 32 political subdivisions, because the former has a variance of only 21 residents while the latter has a variance of 92 persons from the largest to the smallest senate district.
In the House, they choose a plan which splits 118 political units and varies by 25 residents over a plan which splits 73 units and varies in population by 79 persons.
Our position is not enviable. The constitution seems to contemplate that we apply some new-born standard of relative constitutionality.
I never heard of one law being “more constitutional” than another. Constitutionality is like pregnancy. Either you is or you ain’t.
Nevertheless, we are enjoined to decide which plan “complies most accurately”. In doing so, the majority have chosen the simple expedient of comparing the numerical population differences.
Of course, the standard is purely arbitrary and artificial. Population ratios of 1.001 to 1, 1.003 to 1 or 1.009 to 1 are all so infinitesimal as to be meaningless. Everyone would readily concede that even by the time the census report was published, the actual population of the districts had already changed by more than a few ten-thousandths of their ratio to other districts, if indeed the census takers were that accurate in the first instance.
Still, arbitrary as strict nose-count may be as a constitutional standard, it does have considerable merit as a means of extricating this Court from its decennial dilemma.
If we were to settle upon actual population variance as the prime standard, with “number of local units of government subdivided” as the secondary, or tie-breaker yardstick, at least the contending cau*461cuses on the apportionment commission would know the rules of the game, and both would be able to make their best efforts to win the prize.
Fairness and impartiality, however, require one further stipulation. If we are going to let the contract to the lowest bidder we ought to insist upon sealed bids.
It is patently unfair to require one side to make its final offer, and then permit the other side to submit a lower bid.
On the day the Commission met for the last time, the Republicans had submitted the lowest bid. This Court then reopened the bidding and permitted the Democrats to come in on the last day with a lower bid, not previously submitted to the Commission. The Court then refused to remand the matter to the Commission to permit further downward revision.
In my opinion, the matter should be remanded to the Commission, with instructions to submit sealed proposals within ten days, the same to be opened by the Clerk of this Court on a day certain, and with Court in session, the winners to be announced forthwith, based upon the lowest population variance in each House, and with ties broken by reference to the number of political units left intact.