Court Opinion

ID: 9760196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:42:45.183451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:09.116496
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Chief Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the results in the opinion prepared by Judge Brown and in all parts of that opinion with one exception. I would hold that, as a matter of law, we are bound by the 1970 “head count” of the federal census figures and should not consider estimated population shifts that may have occurred since that time. In determining the population of the voting precincts of Shelby County here in question, we should accept the best available population interpolations with respect to the 1970 census, and not changes that are estimated to have taken place since the taking of that census.
I was one of the members of the three-judge district court which decided Baker v. Ellington, 273 F.Supp. 174 (M.D.Tenn.1967), in which all Tennessee Congressional Districts were reapportioned. This was done on the basis of the 1960 federal census, and not on the estimated population shifts that had occurred during the ensuing seven years.
I agree with the opinion of Judge Brown that the estimated population shifts relied upon in the present case are not established by “clear, cogent and convincing evidence.” Nevertheless, even if the evidence of population shifts should be sufficient to meet this high standard, I do not see how we could make changes (or decline to make changes, as suggested in the dissenting opinion), without bringing into question the correctness of the population of the other Congressional Districts of the State, and of the population of the remaining portions of the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Congressional Districts, all of which are based upon the 1970 federal census.