Court Upholds Democrats’ ‘82 State Reapportionment

A federal court on Friday rejected a last-ditch Republican challenge to the California congressional reapportionment plan adopted by the Democrat-controlled Legislature in 1982.

The ruling, as a practical matter, forecloses any revision of the state’s congressional boundaries in time for the 1988 elections and leaves only a slender possibility of change for the 1990 elections, attorneys said.

The special judicial panel voted 2 to 1 to dismiss a suit brought by Republicans contending that the plan should be struck down under a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1986.

The high court, ruling in an Indiana case, said then that political gerrymandering--the design of districts to ensure partisan advantage--was unconstitutional if it “consistently degraded” a voting group’s influence in the political process.

In Friday’s decision, the panel acknowledged that Republican congressional representation was disproportionately lower than its share of the popular vote. But it said the party--unlike black voters who successfully challenged racial gerrymandering--failed to show it was effectively “shut out” of the political process.

California has a Republican governor and senator and recently sent a Republican governor to the White House, Judge Cecil F. Poole of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals noted in a 28-page opinion.

“Republicans in California cannot claim to have been treated as political pariahs,” Poole said. “They have been a formidable, and sometimes dominant, force.”

Attorneys for the party said they would appeal promptly to the U.S. Supreme Court. But even if the high court agrees to hear the case and eventually rules in the Republicans’ favor, it still might not be in time to assure a change for 1990, lawyers said. Meanwhile, the Legislature is to reapportion the districts again in 1991, based on the results of the 1990 Census.

Republican state chairman Robert W. Naylor, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, criticized the ruling for “making a nullity” out of the Supreme Court’s holding and assailed the panel for taking one year and four months after arguments were heard to render a decision.

“It’s outrageous that it took 16 months to get this case decided,” Naylor said. “If the panel had ruled early last year we could have taken it right to the Supreme Court. Instead, we had to wait all this time . . . and the voters will be denied justice in the 1988 elections.”

Hope for ‘Fair Job’

Naylor said that even if there is no revision of districts in the 1990 election, he hoped the party’s suit encourages legislatures around the nation to do a “fair job” of reapportionment for the upcoming decade.

Joseph Remcho of San Francisco, an attorney for state legislative leaders defending the 1982 plan, said the panel had correctly concluded that the harm from political gerrymandering in this case fell far short of that suffered by minorities in instances of racial gerrymandering.

“The important thing is that you really can’t compare Republicans in California to blacks in Selma, Ala.,” said Remcho. “The legal rules against gerrymandering are to protect people who have no access to the political process.”

Jonathan H. Steinberg of Los Angeles, a lawyer for the California Democratic congressional delegation, expressed doubt that the Supreme Court would even agree to hear the Republicans’ appeal.

“What they need to show is a kind of consistent degradation of their political power,” said Steinberg. “And they can’t do that in this case.”

The Republican challenge arose after the adoption of a reapportionment plan designed by the late Rep. Phillip Burton, a powerful San Francisco Democrat. The effect of the plan has been to help the Democrats maintain control of the congressional delegation and the Legislature and to aid incumbents of both parties in retaining office. In 1986, for example, in a total of 165 congressional and legislative contests, no incumbent was defeated.

Plan Signed by Brown

Republicans began a long and frustrating legal challenge to the Democrats’ plan shortly after it was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., just before he left office.

After the case bounced back and forth between federal and state courts, the party gained new hope when the Supreme Court ruled in June, 1986, that judges could intervene in extreme circumstances to prevent partisan gerrymandering.

The Republicans renewed their attack on the California plan before the special three-judge panel, pointing out that while their congressional candidates had won 50% of the statewide vote in 1984 and 47% of the vote in 1986, they had been limited to 40% of the delegation--or 18 of the 45 congressional seats.

In Friday’s ruling, however, Poole concluded that the party had failed to show that Republican voters lacked political power or were being denied fair representation.

“There are no allegations that California Republicans have been ‘shut out’ of the political process, nor are there allegations that anyone has ever interfered with Republican registration, organizing, voting, fund raising and campaigning,” he said.

Republicans still hold 40% of the delegation, said Poole, and it would be “ludicrous” to claim their interests were being ignored in Congress. He noted, for example, that in a racial gerrymandering case in Georgia, blacks had constituted 38% of the voters in one district but had never won a single seat there.

U.S. District Judge Alfonso J. Zirpoli concurred in the decision and issued a brief opinion saying that Republicans had not provided enough evidence of “discriminatory vote dilution” to warrant court intervention.

The third panel member, U.S. District Judge Robert H. Schnacke, said only that he dissented and would file an opinion “in due course.”