PA Supreme Court strikes down PA legislative map.

[jimrtex]

Word is that we keep the old maps for the next two years. Any scholars with insight?

If by "old maps" you mean the ones drawn in 2001, how is that possible when the seats don't have equal population, and PA lost a seat (with respect to the CD's)?

The dissent (by 3 judges says):

"Although I am receptive to the concern that past decisions of the Court may suggest an
unnecessarily stringent approach to equalization of population as between voting
districts, I believe this could be addressed via prospective guidance from the Court."

So apparently the deciding issue was population equality.

The Constitution says:

"The Commonwealth shall be divided into fifty senatorial and two hundred three representative districts, which shall be composed of compact and contiguous territory as nearly equal in population as practicable. Each senatorial district shall elect one Senator, and each representative district one Representative. Unless absolutely necessary no county, city, incorporated town, borough, township or ward shall be divided in forming either a senatorial or representative district."

So the only constitution principles are equal in population as practicable, and no splitting of counties, cities, incorporated towns, borough, township, or wards, unless absolutely necessary.  These are of course in conflict -- it is practicable to have totally equal legislative districts, but it would be absolutely necessary to split all manner of governmental units to do so.

The order says an opinion will follow, but then goes on to say:

"The 2001 Legislative Reapportionment Plan, which this Court previously ordered
to “be used in all forthcoming elections to the General Assembly until the next
constitutionally mandated reapportionment shall be approved."

So it appears the court ruled the new plan which was intended to address population variation recognized by the 2010, did not do so sufficiently; therefore we will continue to use the 2000 plan because we are bound by our 2001 decision that says the 2000 plan is permanent until changed.

They also ordered filing for the elections to begin almost immediately so as to lock it in.

I bet you can get a federal court to overrule on equal protection grounds.

[jimrtex]

I'm talking about for the legislative seats. The Congressional map must be staying since it wasn't part of the breaking news stories.

OK, but the legislative seats are still not equal in population, and in Baker v Carr, SCOTUS ruled that they must be.

The senate districts are within +/- 2.0%, perhaps just barely U shaped distribution which means they were probably just trying to patch the existing map by getting districts within the expected ranges.  To do it right, you really need to decompose the state into regions and apportion whole numbers of districts, and then repeat.

The current map based on 2010 population has an overall population deviation of 29.4%  (13.6% to -15.8%), only 7 of 50 districts are within the 2.0% deviation that all 50 districts have under the new plan.  The standard deviation is 7.7%, nearly 4 times as large as the maximum deviation.

[jimrtex]

Mississippi just held elections for the Legislature in seats that were drawn after the 2000 Census. No Supreme Court intervention there. Could happen in PA too

Mississippi holds legislative elections every 4 years, and they were told that they likely will have to hold new elections before the term is up.  And the legislature failed to pass maps.

In Pennsylvania, new maps were drawn which were tons better than the existing maps, but because they weren't "good enough" the old bad maps should continue to be used.

[jimrtex]

Word is that we keep the old maps for the next two years. Any scholars with insight?

Links to various briefs.

It appears that the issue is the number of political subdivisions that are split.

Oddly or not, the 2000 plan which of course is more out of balance population-wise, splits more political subdivisions.

[jimrtex]

Just got a flood of texts. I know that the state legislative maps have been ruled against. No idea what's going on, if anything, with the Congressional map. Huge story and very surprising.

Speaker Files Suit in Federal Court

Pennsylvania has some interesting constitutional provisions.  The Speaker of the House issues writs of election in case of vacancies, and under ordinary circumstances, must do so within 10 days.  But during the period of reapportionment, this is suspended.   In other words, it is intended that the new plan go in effect immediately, rather than beginning with elections for the next term.   So there are currently 6 vacancies stacked up, which either have to be held on an unconstitutional old map, an unlawful new map, or wait for a lawful new map some time in the indefinite future.

One of the justices in the majority when caught up to in Puerto Rico, said that every one should understood that 2012 elections would be held on the old map, and was surprised that there would be any fuss.

Another federal lawsuit.  This by Hispanic voters.

It appears that they may favor the plan drawn by the redistricting commission since it creates 4 Hispanic-majority districts, 2 in Philladelphia, 1 in Reading, 1 in Allentown.

[jimrtex]

The Court has released its opinion and has outlined how certain districts (mine, for example) should have been drawn.

In what would be an absolute stunner, there is word that the primary could be moved to September.

It seems that there was a lot of gratuitous complaints about the speed which the LRC acted.   Maybe they were pissed about almost missing their trip to Puerto Rico.  You should be grateful that the Supreme Court appointed the 5th member so quickly, and that the Census Bureau delivered the census results 3 weeks before the statutory deadline.

Some notable points.  

They said that a map drawn by a commission, even one in which 4 members are legislative leaders, does not have the same presumption of constitutionality as a legislative enactment.

They said that the commission does not have to prove the constitutionality of their plan, but rather that the burden is on challengers to demonstrate unconstitutionality.   In particular, it was not sufficient to show that the 2011 plan was better than the 2001 plan as far a splitting political subdivisions.  Previous challenges had focused on individual areas, while this year an overall challenge was mounted.  Basically, they said that previous decisions by the court can not be considered as setting precedents (other than perhaps procedure).

They seemed to suggest that population equality had been given too much emphasis in the past.  If you allow for a wider deviation (such as +/- 5%) you will find that you can get better conformance to political boundaries.

They seemed to crawfish on the subject on whether the old boundaries will be used in 2012, saying that they simply were trying to avoid confusing the petition gathering.

A federal court will enjoin the use of the 2001 boundaries.  The Commonwealth won't defend its use.  The federal court will determine that the boundaries drawn by the redistricting commission are the only ones available that provide sufficient equality, and order them to be used until another map can be drawn.

[jimrtex]

I guess the primary will have to be used then. I imagine too many candidates would claim to be disenfranchised because they weren't able to circulate in the new districts (though some are circulating in both the new and the 2001 districts). This is such a disaster.

Redistricting stuff - Senator Majority Leader's site

Orie Melvin dissent

She argues that the LRC plan was compliant with the court's previous precedents, acknowledges that it is untenable to use the 2001 boundaries, and chides the majority opinion for whining that they didn't get to use their Jimmy Buffet shirts because they were stuck in Harrisburg dealing with redistricting.

Saylor dissent

He argues that in the 2001 decision (in which he participated) that he had looked at the number of subdivision splits on a global basis.  The majority opinion claims that 2001 didn't really set any precedents, because the challenges were narrowly focused on localized areas, and so the court hadn't really considered the state as a whole.  Saylor is saying that is untrue.

He also says that any new standards should have been prospective.

Eakin dissent

He notes that "it is never 'absolutely necessary' to draw a line in any spot – it could always go elsewhere".

This is the fundamental flaw in Pennsylvania's redistricting standard.  It tries to impose a local rule (don't split counties, towns, boroughs) which is impossible to follow to achieve a global result.

[jimrtex]

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The PA supremes decided on their own just how you balance the state law on minimizing the division of political jurisdictions against the Baker v Carr equal population Constitutional mandate, and came up with a 0.5% deviation standard, or came up with no standard, and just did what felt right, or what?  Yes, it seems the federal courts will throw this one out in a hurry. They may even uphold the map that was drawn by the Commission, if it otherwise minimized divisions subject to getting equal - or more equal - populations.

Review of redistricting plans by the commission by the Supreme Court are mandatory.   And it appears in the previous reviews, the Supreme Court gave more emphasis to population balance than splitting of political jurisdictions (or at least they claim).  It appears that they have always had less deviation than 5%, which is not at all helpful if you are trying to avoid splitting jurisdictions.  Pennsylvania has a large house (203 delegates) so districts are around 60,000 persons.  5% is only 3,000.  So you then start having to chop things up, and you start getting careless about the number of chops. 

Pennsylvania appears to count the number of entities split, and the number of split pieces.  So if Philadelphia has the population for 23 districts, it gets counted as being split, and also as being split into 23+ pieces, when a better measurement would be to not count it as being split, and only focusing on whether it was really necessary to be split into 27 pieces.  Based on their scoring system, they end up with 100s of splits, and the issue is whether you could get by with 800 splits, and were another 213 necessary.

The 2011 plan divides fewer political subdivisions than the 2001 plan, and of course has better population equality.  The Supreme Court has at least implied that they don't think the LRC can come up with a compliant plan in time for the 2012 election.  So a federal court could well reason that noone could create a plan that complies with the Pennsylvania constitution - because not only does it contain standards regarding the contents of the plan, it includes procedural standards.   A federal court is ill-suited to determine if some alternative complies with Pennsylvania constitution.  Even if the court drew a map with fewer splits, it can't draw a map that the commission would draw.   But is can see that there is a plan drawn by the LRC that complies with equal protection and the VRA.

The Supreme Court is essentially saying that there can be no precedents.  Just because X splits were used previously, doesn't mean that X or even less splits can be used this time, because the data is different.  They are also claiming that they hadn't really considered the overall plan previously, because the challenges were based on district boundaries in localized areas.  This time, a challenger drew a map with fewer splits.

One of the federal court complaints is also that the 2001 plan dilutes Hispanic voting power (the 2011 plan creates 4 Hispanic districts, 2 in Philadelphia, 1 in Reading, and 1 in Lehigh County).

[jimrtex]

A federal district court refused to enjoin the use of the malapportioned 2001 districts.

I think he gave too much deference to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.  The Pennsylvania court did not consider whether the 2001 map was constitutional, other than in a mechanical sense.  Back in 2001, their decision said the map would be used until a new map was created.

A map is not lawful simply because a court 11 years ago said that it should be used for the indefinite future.