Justices Deny GOP Appeal of California Redistricting

The Supreme Court, taking a hands-off approach to the mapping of political districts, ruled Tuesday that California Republicans had no legal basis for attacking a plan engineered by Democrats that helped give the Democrats a lock on most of the state’s 45 seats in Congress in the 1980s.

Lawyers say that the high court action, on a 6-3 vote, leaves it up to politicians--not the federal courts--to draw the district boundaries that can determine who wins an election.

The real impact of the ruling will be felt, they say, in the early 1990s, when state legislatures redraw district lines based on the 1990 census.

With Democrats in control of 28 state legislatures, compared to eight for the Republicans, (the remaining 14 are split between the two parties), the Democrats are in a position to give themselves a big advantage in extending their control over the House of Representatives through the next decade.

Strangely shaped electoral districts are nothing new in American politics. In 1814, Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry drew up a district that so resembled a salamander that a cartoonist labeled it a “gerrymander.” The process of drawing district boundaries for political advantage became known as gerrymandering.

Today legislators employ computers and demographic data to draw boundary lines to give themselves an edge. Political analysts say that a controlling party can give itself an advantage in the majority of seats by lumping the likely opposition voters into a few districts. This leaves the rest of the districts with a comfortable majority of their own likely voters.

The high court ruling dashed the hope of the Republican National Committee that the federal courts would act to block the California districting plan, which the Republicans believe was blatantly unfair.

Republican National Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. and his designated successor, Lee Atwater, issued a statement saying they were “disappointed” with the decision.

“However, this does not change our belief that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. Throughout the next decade, the (national committee) will continue to pursue all avenues, including legal remedies, to ensure that every American receives fair representation” in Congress and in state legislatures, they said.

Last Hope of Party

In California, the decision puts pressure on Republicans to find a strong candidate for governor in 1990. Republican Gov. George Deukmejian has announced that he plans to retire at the end of his current term. With Democrats in control of both houses of the Legislature, the veto power of a Republican governor is the GOP’s best hope for putting a check on a Democratic redistricting scheme.

On Jan. 2, 1983, hours before Deukmejian became governor, outgoing Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed into law a redistricting plan drawn up by the Democrats in a special session. Three months earlier, the voters in a statewide referendum had rejected an earlier Democratic plan based on Republican charges that it was unfair. When the second, similar redistricting plan was enacted in 1983, the Republicans took their battle to the courts.

Basis of Charges

The Supreme Court in 1986 seemed receptive to such a suit. In a split ruling on an Indiana redistricting lawsuit, the justices announced for the first time that partisan gerrymandering could violate the Constitution’s guarantee of the “equal protection of laws.” If an electoral scheme “consistently degrades” the influence of some voters, it is unconstitutional, Justice Byron R. White wrote.

Republican lawyers said that is just what the Democrats had done to them in California.

The Democratic electoral plan “discriminates against Republican voters by purposefully diluting, minimizing and canceling their votes and voting strength statewide,” the Republicans charged. It “carves up the state” so as to “virtually guarantee” a big Democratic majority in Congress, they added.

In 1980, before the first redistricting plan was put into effect, the Democrats held 22 congressional seats from California, while Republicans had 21. Since then, the Democrats have held a 27-18 majority, even though Californians in recent elections have split their votes about evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

But the GOP lawsuit went nowhere. Last April, a divided three-judge federal panel in San Francisco dismissed it without a trial. Judge Cecil Poole said the Republicans had no basis for calling the plan unconstitutional because they are not “effectively shut out of the political process.” His ruling interpreted the earlier opinion by Justice White to apply only to fringe political parties that are entirely screened out of power.

It is “ludicrous” for the California Republicans to complain, Poole said, since they “still hold 40% of the congressional seats, a sizable bloc that is far more than mere token representation.”

The Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court, which for months seemed undecided whether to hear the case. In October, the justices dismissed the appeal but then granted it a rehearing in November.

On Tuesday, they issued a brief order in the case (Badham vs. March Fong Eu, Secretary of State of California, 87-1818): “The judgment is affirmed.” This amounts to a ruling upholding Judge Poole’s opinion.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy voted to hear the appeal.

“Finally, the lawsuit-that-would-never-die is now over with,” said a delighted Jonathan Steinberg, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented California Democrats. “This ruling also sends a clear message that matters of politics are to be decided through the political process.”

James Parrinello of San Francisco, a lawyer for the Republicans, said he does not know what to make of the court action. “Obviously, we came up one vote short” of gaining a hearing, he said. It takes the votes of four justices to grant a court hearing.

The court’s brief order gave no hint of the behind-the-scenes struggle on the case, but Justice White’s vote was particularly puzzling to the lawyers. The author of the 1986 gerrymandering ruling, White joined Justice Stevens in October in voting to hear the California case. But this time, when White’s vote was crucial, he joined the majority denying a hearing.