Calkins v. Hare

¶1The plaintiffs have challenged the constitutionality of the congressional districting in this state.

¶2The action had been started on June 29, 1962, plaintiffs alleging in their original bill of complaint that the congressional districts then established (by Act 20, P.A.1931, as amended by Act 64, P.A. 1951) were unconstitutional. A preliminary injunction was denied by this court •on July 10, 1962. In June, 1963, effective September 6, 1963, the Michigan Legislature enacted the congressional districting bill now under challenge, Act 249, P. A.1963. Following the decision in the case of Wesberry v. Sanders, (1964), 84 S.Ct. 526, plaintiffs, upon leave granted, amended their complaint, now attacking the constitutionality of the most recent act, No. 249, P.A.1963, in the light of Wesberry.

¶3A hearing was had on March 2, 1964, upon the motion for preliminary injunction. Plaintiffs based their case upon the population figures, from the 1960 census, for the various districts, pointing out the various discrepancies thus disclosed, and asserting, upon the authority of Wesberry, that constitutional requirements had not been met. The Attorney General, appearing for defendant Secretary of State, conceded that the criterion of “one man, one vote” had been, prima facie, violated and could offer no explanation of the reasons for the population variances shown “without an examination of the legislative history” of the Act. The intervening defendant was represented by counsel whose relationship to the Act under consideration was of substantial aid to the Court, he having (in 1962) “entered full time public service, when one of my objectives was to achieve the redistricting of Michigan on a basis as nearly to population as practicable”. (Tr. 64) His explanation of the criterion employed by the Legislature in drawing the district lines was illuminating:

“ … But so far as the Legislature was aware when it took action in 1963 — and it was one of the most difficult accomplishments of that Legislative Session, the objective of equal population was satisfied if it hit a 15 per cent standard, and with the exception of the Fifteenth District and the Upper Peninsula District and ignoring some fractional deviations — there are some that go a fraction over 15 per cent — they came within that standard for all but two of the districts of the state, and they hit an average deviation of less than 10 per cent. … ”

¶4It was also suggested to the Court that a proper element of “practicability” was consideration of the legislative problem of just what kind of districting the Legislature would accept, in short, what bill the votes could be obtained for.

¶5At this juncture it was the opinion of a majority of the Court that a prima facie showing of unconstitutionality had been made, that the motion for preliminary injunction should be denied, and that the matter be set down for hearing on the merits on March 23rd. The parties were cautioned by the Court to consider the matters of proof upon the merits— “it will be for them to decide whether they wish to make any factual showing *826of the considerations that went into the apportionment as it was made for the purpose of asserting that the apportionment was done within reasonable and practicable limits obedient to the Constitution of the United States.” (Tr. 92)

¶6We have now held the hearing on the merits. No testimony was tendered by any party. The Attorney General stated to the Court that no legislative history of the challenged Act was available. The intervening defendant argued the contents of his brief. The plaintiffs did likewise. Upon the showing thus made the Court considered the matter as submitted.

¶7The Plaintiffs, then, have challenged the constitutionality of the congressional districting in this state.1 They point out that certain districts in the Detroit area alone differ in population by over a hundred thousand,2 that there is a variation from the smallest to the largest district in the State of almost two hundred thousand,3 and that the Wayne County (Detroit area) districts average 444,000 persons, whereas the out-state average is approximately 397,000. Even if apportionment were based upon some factor other than population it would be impossible, in our judgment, to justify such variations in the Wayne County area alone. Thus, geographically, there are no intervening mountain ranges between districts, as in Colorado, no rivers or plains. Yet some districts in the County of Wayne (Thirteenth and Fifteenth) have the greatest debasement of vote values found anywhere in the state, while another district in the County, a suburban area adjacent to the Thirteenth, namely, the Fourteenth, has the third-greatest enhancement of voting power in the state. Thus the fact of residence in the Fifteenth District means that one’s vote is diluted more than in any other district in the state, while a few miles away, in the Fourteenth District, one’s vote is weighted higher than in any of other areas in the state, save two.4

¶8That a constitutional right is involved is clear. Art. I, § 2 of the United States Constitution, “that Representatives be chosen ‘by the People of the several States’ means that as nearly as is practicable one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.”5 The intervening defendant professes to find in Wesberry a “strange inconsistency”. If the clause above quoted, we are told, “means what it says, then raw population statistics are irrelevant” and “voting population” becomes relevant. (All emphasis in original). To make his point, intervening defendant cites the vote for Secretary of State in Wayne County in 1962. Just why this official’s vote was selected, among the host of others running, including a Governor, does not appear. Or why registered voters were not used, or persons over 21 eligible to vote. Each of such latter categories might find theoretical justification. But we are a District Court. We take Wesberry as our precedent. It is apparent from the majority opinion that this issue had consideration in the Supreme Court in Wesberry, since Justice Harlan’s dissenting opinion (n. 4) raises this precise question — “Is the number of voters or the number of inhabitants controlling?” The answer, in our judgment, is found again and again in the Wesberry opinion, from the opening paragraph, referring to the 1960 census by districts and averages and refer-*827Ting to “this inequality of population”, to the closing paragraph which speaks of “equal representation for equal numbers of people.” We find no inconsistency in the opinion.

¶9In our consideration of this case, we start with the principle that the right ■of franchise is “a fundamental political right, because preservative of all Tights”.6 This being the case we do not •equate the presumption of constitutionality in this situation to that employed in "the general police power cases, involving the regulation of health or morals, or the fixing of guide lines for a state’s experimentations in matters of social welfare or economic controls. In these cases the states are properly given a wide latitude.7 But where we are concerned with a basic •constitutional right our requirements are infinitely more rigorous. Here the cloak ■of constitutionality is not loosely worn. There is little elbow room for freedom •of movement. The fit must be precise. We do not experiment with freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom to vote. These are among the basic civil rights of man. Cf. Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 86 L.Ed. 1655 (1942).

¶10Plaintiff here has established that gross population inequities exist in the ■congressional districting of this state. To us it is inexplicable, for example, that there should be a difference of almost a hundred thousand people between the adjacent Thirteenth and Fourteenth Districts in Detroit. At this point the burden is upon the State to come forward with some rational explanation for what has been done.8 In reply we are told by .the Attorney General that he “has been unable to find any committee reports or legislative debates which reveal the specific causes or reasons which led to the formation of the congressional districts provided in Act 249 and must forego any factual presentation as to this aspect of the matter.”

¶11The intervening defendant is but little more helpful. He argues principally the questions raised in footnote 4 to the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan in Wesberry. However persuasive these considerations may have been in conference in the Supreme Court prior to the Court’s vote on the case, they are of little help to a District Court that is attempting to apply the Wesberry decision, not to rehear it.

¶12Two arguments are suggested by intervening defendant in addition to Mr. Justice Harlan’s questions. He states, without documentation or proof of any kind, that the Legislature took into account population trends in creating certain districts, and asks if the Legislature were not “entitled to anticipate a further drop” in the population of some districts and further growth in others. The difficulty with the argument made is that it *828is totally devoid of any tie to the realities of the case at bar. No proofs are before as, merely questions and conclusions, all of which are disputed or denied by plaintiffs. Any districting, however disparate with respect to population, may conceivably be justified by saying that the Legislature expected the area to either shrink or to grow. If such a suggestion, without more, suffices to justify gross population disparities, then an easy answer to a constitutional denial has indeed been found. We do not intimate that population trends either are or are not significant and useable. But the difficulty in respect of their use is that a basic constitutional right may be lost to a speculative future event, an unequal trade at best and at worst a cynical deprivation. The proof of a “trend” must be compelling, immediate, and inescapable to justify disfranchisement. We find here, on the other hand, no proofs whatever. As a matter of fact the point is not raised in the intervening defendant's answers.

¶13The intervening defendant urges also that in construing Wesberry’s “as nearly as practicable” language, we should take into account that “if it appears to the court that the ‘fundamental goal’ of the legislature and the governor in the enactment of an apportionment statute was ‘equal representation for equal numbers of people,’ then the courts should not substitute their judgment for that of these elected officials. What may seem clearly practicable to a three-judge court, or an eight-judge court, or a nine-judge court may not be realistically practicable for 144 elected representatives of 8,000,000 people.” (Brief of Intervening Defendant, page 15) The point here, as made abundantly clear upon oral argument, is that if you can’t get the votes for equal districts, you have done the best you can and the courts should stay out of it. This is a pre-Baker v. Carr,9 indeed pre-Brown v. Board of Education,10 argument. It is self-answering.

¶14Finally, it is urged to us that despite-unexplained and apparently unexplainable variations between districts of tens,, fifties, and, even, a hundred thousand,11 there is, after all, an “average departure” of only 9.2% from equality. We do not propose to be drawn into a sterile controversy over averages and percentages, whether 9%, 15% or other. We do not measure constitutional rights in these terms. They set up wholly false standards. That the average man gets due-process in our courts does not justify railroading some luckless scoundrel every now and then. Nor is it an answer to a charge of unconstitutional disfranchisement that only 10,000 people are deprived of their right to vote, this being but a small percentage of the entire voting population. These 10,000 have a right to vote equally with others, no matter what percentage of the total they comprise. We take this to be as clear as the proposition that none of our people can be denied their free right of worship no matter how small the sect, and that none of our people shall be deprived of their right of free speech, no matter how obnoxious to most of us their doctrines.

¶15The short of the matter is that a citizen can either vote equally with his peers or he cannot. If he cannot, and we find that he cannot with respect to congressional elections in Michigan, his constitutional rights have been abridged. The-*829statute here complained of is unconstitutional.

¶16The constitutional guideline may be simply stated: the Legislature may not “draw the lines of congressional districts in such a way as to give some voters a greater voice in choosing a Congressman than others.” 12A man’s vote may not be taken from him. It may not be diluted or debased, nor, on the other hand, magnified nor enhanced. Our Constitution’s “plain objective” is that of making “equal representation for equal numbers of people the fundamental goal for the House of Representatives.”13 One. factor and one alone is controlling, the factor of population.14 It is true that the Wesberry court speaks of one vote being “as nearly as practicable” worth that of another, but we do not see in these words an escape hatch for the reluctant. Nor in the caveat that the weight of votes need not be mathematically precise. What is meant here is merely that the ideal district lines enclosing mathematically equal areas of population may make minor departures here and there from such ideal, in accordance with the needs of the situation, and without “unnecessarily” (Wesberry, page 535) abridging the people’s rights. But these are minor concessions to practicability, the avoidance of ideal mathematical precision, merely. They are the application in this field of the well-known de minimis doctrine. Should the concessions made result in substantial (not minimal) and unnecessary inequalities between the districts, the lines of unconstitutionality will have been crossed. This concept of equality, which some profess to find so puzzling, is not an alien doctrine, newly imported to our shores. Long before Wesberry, we knew of the doctrines of equal rights and opportunities, of equal treatment in our courts, and of equal schooling for our children. We need not exhaust the litany. If there is one dominant social and political belief held by all our people, it is that we are both free and equal. Its implementation with respect to voting rights should present no insurmountable obstacles to those minded to pursue it.

¶17The matter of remedy remains. It is urged to us that it is now too late for remedial action by the Legislature in time for the forthcoming congressional elections and that our citizens must rest with their disfranchisement until the elections in 1966, a period of over two years. This we cannot accept.

¶18Of course, as Judge Brown of the Fifth Circuit held for the Court in Bush v. Martin (S.D.Tex.1963), 224 F.Supp. 499, aff’d and remanded, per curiam, sub nom. Martin et al. v. Bush, 84 S.Ct. 709 (1964), “the easy way out is either to-take no action or formally to defer action … But this Court no less than the Supreme Court of the United States is charged with serious obligations under Art. Ill of the Constitution and under the implementing statutes of Congress to-afford to litigants appropriate relief in vindication of constitutional and civil rights. We must therefore balance the-relative advantages, disadvantages, the relative injuries to the parties, and perhaps even more so to the whole State … (224 F.Supp. at 513)

¶19Upon balance, therefore, we have a deprivation of the constitutional rights-of thousands of our people, remedial by setting up districts of equal population. As against these interests, it is urged to-us that the matter is one of such extreme-complexity that the Legislature either cannot or will not act without delay, thus forcing the state into undesirable elections at large.

¶20The need for and propriety of immediate relief is evident when consideration is given to the obvious advantage, (1) to the people of the state, whose interests are our primary concern, and who-have a right to expect stability and continuity in the districts in which they reside, and in their representation in the *830Congress; (2) to the incumbent congressmen who are entitled to have a determination of their districts and a designation of the people they are expected to service; and (3) to those persons who may wish to become candidates for the office of congressman, who should not be exposed to imminent prospective changes in district lines and constituencies.

¶21It is true, of course, that the Legislature may refuse or neglect to amend the now-specified dates for certain steps in the electoral process; it may refuse or neglect to reapportion in accordance with the Constitution; or, having done so, it may refuse or neglect to give such reapportionment act the immediate effect it should have in order to insure to our people the basic rights involved and avoid an election at large. We do not assume that any of these refusals or neglects will take place, preferring, rather, to assume that the Legislature will act with alacrity once its constitutional duty is made clear to it. But should, regrettably, the Legislature so fail the people, our duty becomes the greater, not the lesser. Under such circumstances, the “vindication of constitutional and civil rights,” which it is our duty to sustain, can be accomplished only through the process of election at large, a procedure the choice of which will rest with the elected representatives of the people.

¶22We do not read the per curiam opinion in Martin v. Bush, supra, as a nationwide directive to the District Courts to leave things be. The District Court opinion in Martin pointed out that under Texas law, “reapportionment must be accomplished by February 3, 1964.” Yet the case in the Supreme Court was not reached and decided until a month after February 3, 1964; namely, until March 2, 1964. We do not see how the Supreme Court could, as it put the matter, “in the light of the present circumstances,” have done other than remand with the instructions embodied in it. In our case, however, there is ample time to act, should the Legislature be so minded, as we believe they should be and are.

¶23The constitutional deprivation is clear and the legislative duty is manifest.