Minnesota State Senate v. Beens/Dissent Stewart

[p201] MR. JUSTICE STEWART, dissenting.

It is undisputed here that the apportionment of the Minnesota State Legislature violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, it was incumbent upon the three-judge federal court to devise a constitutional reapportionment, unless and until the Minnesota Legislature and Governor could agree upon and enact a new and constitutional reapportionment of their own. The only question presented by these appeals is whether the three-judge court abused its equitable discretion by devising the reapportionment plan that it did—a plan that called for a reduction in the size of both houses of the state legislature.

There is no doubt that "[o]nce a right and a violation have been shown, the scope of a district court's equitable powers to remedy past wrongs is broad, for breadth and [p202] flexibility are inherent in flexible remedies." Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 15. At the same time "[t]he remedial powers of an equity court... are not unlimited." Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124, 161. In the reapportionment context, it is the duty of a court seeking to remedy an unconstitutional apportionment to right the constitutional wrong while minimizing disturbance of legitimate state policies.

In these cases, the three-judge court appears conscientiously to have undertaken this risk. It clearly recognized that the size of the houses of the Minnesota Legislature set by state statute was a state policy deserving respect. But it also recognized that there were several other legitimate state policies at stake—for one, the conformance of legislative district boundaries to political jurisdictional boundaries. The three-judge court also found that these policies were, unfortunately, in conflict. It stated: "'The larger the population of each Senate and House District, the more closely can the equal protection (one man-one vote) requirements be met and still give effect to the State policy of adhering to the boundaries of political subdivisions. Conversely, the smaller the population of each district, the greater the likelihood that the deviations will be higher than are acceptable or that artificial boundaries will result.'" Faced with this perceived conflict among legitimate state policies, the three-judge court weighed those policies and decided that preservation of political jurisdictional boundaries should take precedence over preservation of the present size of the senate and the house.

[p203] Perhaps the three-judge court's assessment of the relative weights of what it saw as competing state policies was mistaken. Perhaps its accommodation of those policies was also mistaken. But those judgments by the three-judge court were based on long and careful study of the distribution of population in Minnesota and of the possible alternative apportionments of the legislature.

This Court chooses to act on these appeals summarily. Yet we do not have before us all the population statistics and jurisdictional and district maps that were before the three-judge Court. We do not have the benefit of the reports of the Special Masters that were available to the three-judge court. We do not even have briefs on the merits of these cases. And, of course, we have not heard oral arguments. For these and other reasons we are simply not able at this point even to begin to evaluate the three-judge court's exercise of its remedial power in equity.

Surely, if state policies are in real conflict and if, as the three-judge court found, equal protection requirements cannot be met without sacrificing one of these policies, then the cases are very difficult. I certainly cannot say, on the basis of the information before us, that the three-judge court clearly overstepped its equitable discretion in its resolution of the problem. As the Court recognizes today, there is no rigid and absolute limit on a court's equitable discretion to order changes in the size of legislative bodies in order to remedy an unconstitutional apportionment. Every case is different, and these questions are inevitably questions of degree.

I have disagreed with the Court's Procrustean view of the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive requirement of "one man, one vote." But until and unless those [p204] established requirements are modified, the federal courts are often going to be faced with hard remedial problems such as those presented here. Difficult problems produce solutions that are difficult to review, even after full briefing and oral argument. I cannot believe that summary action here is either wise or appropriate, and I therefore respectfully dissent.