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overall range of either zero or one person. That is likely to be the standard for most plans in the future. If you can't draw congressional districts that are mathematically equal in population, don't assume that others can't. Assume that you risk having your plan challenged in court and replaced by another with a lower overall range. 2. Unless Necessary to Achieve "Some Legitimate State Objective" Even if a challenger is able to draw a congressional plan with a lower overall range than yours, you may still be able to save your plan if you can show that each significant deviation from the ideal was necessary to achieve "some legitimate state objective." Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U.S. 725, 740 (1983). As Justice Brennan, writing for the 5 -4 majority in Karcher v. Daggett, said: Any number of consistently applied legislative policies might justify some variance, including, for instance, making districts compact, respecting municipal boundaries, preserving the cores of prior districts, and avoiding contests between incumbent Representatives ... . The State must, however, show with some specificity that a particular objective required the specific deviations in its plan, rather than simply relying on general assertions . . . . By necessity, whether deviations are justified requires case -by -case attention to these factors. 462 U.S. at 740 -41. So, if you intend to rely on these "legitimate state objectives" to justify any degree of population inequality in a congressional plan, you would be well advised to articulate those objectives in advance, follow them consistently, and be prepared to show that you could not have achieved those objectives in each district with districts that had a smaller deviation from the ideal. Arkansas, Turner v. Arkansas, 784 F. Supp. 553 (E.D. Ark. 1991); Maryland, Anne Arundel County Republican Cent. Committee v. State Administrative Bd. of Election Laws, 781 F. Supp. 394 (D. Md. 1991); and West Virginia, Stone v. Hechler, 782 F. Supp. 1116 (W.D. W.Va. 1992); all were able to meet that burden when congressional plans drawn by the legislature were challenged in court in the 1990s. Near the end of the decade, the Supreme Court upheld a court-drawn congressional plan in Georgia with an overall range of 0.35 percent (about 2,000 people). Abrams v. Johnson, 117 S. Ct. 1925 (1997). But that was the lowest range of all the plans that met constitutional requirements, Georgia was able to show it had a consistent historical practice of not splitting counties outside the Atlanta area, and likely shifts in population since 1990 had made any further effort to achieve population equality illusory. D. Legislative Plans 1. An Overall Range of Less than Ten Percent Fortunately for those of you who will be drawing redistricting plans after the 2000 census, the Supreme Court has adopted a less exacting standard for legislative plans. It is not based on the Apportionment Clause of Article I, Section 2, which governs congressional plans. Rather, it is based on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. As Chief Justice Earl Warren observed in the 1964 case of Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, "mathematical nicety is not a constitutional requisite" when drawing legislative plans. All