Court Opinion

ID: 9426804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:59.766865+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.312220
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell
dissenting.
The Court today strikes down the entire Mississippi reapportionment plan ordered by the District Court as violative of the one-person, one-vote principles announced in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533 (1964). In my view, this result — which no party to this protracted litigation has urged in this Court1 — is both unnecessary and erroneous. The question, as the Court correctly states, is “whether the District Court properly exercised its equitable discretion in reconciling the requirements of the Constitution with the goals.of state political policy.” Ante, at 414. Although I believe further proceedings are necessary with respect to certain aspects of the District Court’s plan, I find no basis on this record for holding that the District Court abused the broad discretion that it necessarily must exercise in cases of this kind.
In my view the District Court’s overall plan is sound, and *431does not impermissibly depart from the one-person, one-vote requirements of our prior cases. The court’s plan contains maximum deviations from absolute population equality of 16.5% (Senate) and 19.3% (House). In Mahan v. Howell, 410 U. S. 315 (1973), we sustained a legislative reapportionment plan for the Virginia House of Delegates in which the maximum variation was 16.4%. We held that this deviation was justified by the State’s policy of maintaining the integrity of political subdivision lines, id., at 325; see Davis v. Mann, 377 U. S. 678, 686 (1964). The same policy justifies the comparable deviations in the District Court’s plan for Mississippi, a State which also has a tradition of respecting the integrity of political subdivision lines in drawing legislative districts.
To be sure, the plan before- us was ordered by a federal court, and we have said that such a plan must be examined more critically than one adopted by a state legislature. Chapman v. Meier, 420 U. S. 1 (1975). But the theory underlying that more demanding standard of review is that legislative plans are likely to reflect a State’s political policy and the will of its people more accurately than a decision by unelected federal judges. Where the deviations in a court’s plan are attributable, as in this case, to an explicit policy of deference to the State’s traditional district lines, the distinction becomes relatively unimportant.2 And where the deviations are also accepted by all parties to the litigation, as is true of the basic House plan, the distinction seems wholly irrelevant.
The issue primarily presented and argued in these appeals is whether the District Court plan impermissibly dilutes Negro voting strength. I agree generally with Mr. Justice Blackmun’s concurring opinion on this aspect of the case. *432I find no evidence in this record to suggest that the plan, which assures substantial Negro representation in the State, Brief for United States 22, has had the overall effect of diluting the Negro vote.
The United States and the private appellants, however, have called our attention to a number of specific concentrations of Negro voters in the State which are fragmented among two or more districts by the court's plan. The United States focuses in particular on six counties for which it claims that alternative district lines proposed by the parties would preserve an appropriate reconciliation of competing interests — population equality, geographic compactness, adherence to traditional political boundaries — without fragmenting the Negro vote.3 Because the District Court failed to explain why it rejected the proposed alternatives, these contentions are virtually impossible to review. Accordingly, I would remand the case to the District Court for further findings comparing in detail the challenged lines in the court's plan to those proposed by the United States. But I would limit the scope of the remand to the districts specifically challenged in this appeal by the United States for unnecessary racial dilution and to the districts which would require readjustment under the alternatives the United States has proposed.4 In all other respects I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.5

 The United States, the appellant in No. 76-934, does not challenge the plan as failing to meet the one-person, one-vote requirement of the Equal Protection Clause. The private appellants challenge only the Senate plan and limited aspects of the House plan on this basis.

 We noted in Chapman: “It is far from apparent that North Dakota policy currently requires or favors strict adherence to political lines.” 420 U. S., at 25.

 The counties and challenged districts are as follows: Hinds (Senate Districts 31-35); Warren (House Districts 53-55); Forrest (House Districts 103-106); Washington (House Districts 32-35), and Claiborne and Jefferson (Senate Districts 37-38). Brief for United States 74-92, 45a-71a.

 The alternative proposed for Warren County (House Districts 53-55) would require redistricting in House Districts 47 and 56. Id., at 54a n. *. The alternative proposed in Claiborne and Jefferson Counties- (Senate Districts 37 and 38) apparently would require readjustment in the surrounding counties. Id., at 68a-71a.
As the Court notes, the validity of the apportionment in Hinds County is now pending in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit after rehearing en banc. Kirksey v. Board of Supervisors of Hinds County, No. 75-*4332212. I agree that we should not pretermit that court’s consideration of issues before it. If the Fifth Circuit in Kirksey were to order the supervisory districts to be redrawn, the District Court necessarily would have to re-examine the corresponding legislative districts in its apportionment plan.
Although the private appellants challenge additional aspects of the court’s Senate plan for unnecessary racial dilution, they do not offer alternatives limited to the affected districts in the court’s plan but instead urge that the entire plan be set aside.- Because I believe the basic plan is sound for the reasons stated in text, I would reject these additional challenges. The private appellants also challenge the court's House plan for Adams County, claiming that the court should have adopted a district with a larger Negro voting-age population (59.5%) than that which obtains in District 89 (50.7%). In my view this contention is without merit.

 The Court’s disposition of the case makes it unnecessary to discuss the further issue of special elections.