Communication 09 How To draw Redistricting Plans That Will Stand Up In Court

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of State Legislatures, Action on Redistricting Plans, 2001-07 ( <www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/departments/scr/redist/redsum2000/act>. Near the end of the 1990s, the Supreme Court upheld a court-draw Georgia with an overall range of 0.35 percent (about 2,000 peopl Abrams v. Johnson,521 U.S. 74 (1997). But that was the lowest range of all the plans that me Georgia was able to show it had a consistent historical practice Atlanta area, and likely shifts in population since 1990 had mad population equality illusory. E.Legislative Plans 1.An Overall Range of Less than Ten Percent Fortunately for those of you who will be drawing redistricting p the Supreme Court has adopted a less exacting standard for legis Apportionment Clause of Article I, § 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 dra necessary is that they achieve substantial equality of populati Id. at 579. Substantial equality of population has come to mean that a leg thrown out for inequality of population if its overall range is proof of intentional discrimination within that range. The ten-percent standard was first articulated in a dissenting o Brennan in the cases of Gaffney v. Cummings,412 U.S. 735, and White v. Regester,412 U.S. 755, in 1973. In later cases, the Court majority has endorsed and fol dissent accused them of establishing. See, e.g.,Chapman v. Meier,420 U.S. 1 (1975); Connor v. Finch,431 U.S. 407 (1977); Brown v. Thomson, 462 U.S. 835, 842-43 (1983); Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146 (1993). An overall range of less than ten percent is not a safe harbor. Georgia General Assembly had systematically underpopulated distr inner-city Atlanta and overpopulated districts in the suburban a in order to favor Democratic candidates and disfavor Republican systematically paired Republican incumbents while reducing the n who were paired, and that the plans tended to ignore the traditi Georgia in previous decades, such as keeping districts compact, contiguity, keeping counties whole, and preserving the cores of down as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.Larios v. Cox, 300 F. Supp.2d 1320 (N.D. Ga. 2004),aff’d,542 U.S.947 (2004) (mem.). 14