Bannister v. Davis

263 F. Supp. 202, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6657
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Louisiana
DecidedDecember 30, 1966
DocketCiv. A. 2818, 3316
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 263 F. Supp. 202 (Bannister v. Davis) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bannister v. Davis, 263 F. Supp. 202, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6657 (E.D. La. 1966).

Opinion

*205 OPINION

Before WISDOM, Circuit Judge, and CHRISTENBERRY and WEST, District Judges.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

These reapportionment cases involve the right of Louisiana citizens not to be shortchanged in their vote for members of the state legislature.

When the cases came before this Court earlier in the year we declined to act until the Louisiana legislature should have another opportunity to reapportion itself. The federal courts’ proper respect for the state and the judiciary’s proper respect for the legislative function impelled this restraint. Promptly after the expiration of the regular legislative session of 1966, the legislature having taken no action on reapportionment, this Court heard motions raising the critical legal issues. At the conclusion of this hearing, July 29, 1966, the Court ruled that the existing apportionment of seats in both houses of the Louisiana legislature, virtually unchanged since 1920, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The defendants contended that the House was reapportioned in 1963 in response to an order and opinion of the Court in Daniel v. Davis, E.D.La., 220 F.Supp. 601. There is no merit to this contention. That case was decided before the Supreme Court decided Reynolds v. Sims, 1964, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506. The complaint asked not for reapportionment of the House, but for reallocation of 25 seats. This number represented the difference between the total membership in the House and the number of representatives holding seats in accordance with the Louisiana constitutional requirement that each of the State’s 64 parishes, except Orleans, and each ward in Orleans Parish have at least one representative. In Daniel v. Davis this Court limited its holding to the issue before us. We said:

“This is as far as we need go at this time in this case, which presents only the narrow question of the apportionment of the twenty-five allocable seats in the Louisiana House of Representatives.”

The Court is unanimously of the opinion that unless the legislature of the State of Louisiana adopt and submit to this Court before January 1, 1967, a constitutionally satisfactory statute reapportioning its Senate and House, the Court will order that the next subsequent election for both houses be conducted at large. The Court will issue such an order even if a constitutionally satisfactory plan (statute) be submitted on or after January 1, 1967. If no acceptable plan is presented before that date, this Court will issue an appropriate order governing the conduct of the election. If a constitutionally valid plan is submitted for only one of the two houses, elections for both houses will be conducted at large.

The Constitution of Louisiana requires reapportionment after each ten-year census of the United States. Accordingly, the reapportionment resulting from this decision should remain in effect only until the expiration of the first session of the Legislature after the 1970 census. If that session does not produce reapportionment, voters subject to a malapportioned legislature will have this case as precedent for prompt relief.

Any provision of the Louisiana Constitution or statutes conflicting with the “one man, one vote” principle, as applied by the Supreme Court and this Court, must yield to the Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution. However, it is for the Louisiana courts to decide whether any provision of a reapportionment law conflicts with Louisiana law.

In the interest of lightening the legislature’s task by now stating this Court’s criteria for lawful reapportionment, the Court has formulated the following guidelines.

*206 For convenience, the Court has attempted to avoid legalistic terms and has omitted case citations and footnotes. 1

I. General Principles set forth in Reynolds v. Sims.

The controlling consideration in reapportionment is that both houses be apportioned on a population basis. One person’s vote should be worth as much as any other person’s vote. The constitutional right to be protected is personal; the individual voter is key; the right attaches to individuals alone. “People,” the Supreme Court has said, “not land or trees or pastures, vote.” The protected right, therefore, does not extend to economic groups, interest blocs, geographical areas, or political subdivisions. A history of under or overrepresentation, no matter how longstanding, is no excuse for continuing an unfair system of apportionment. If a voter has been shortchanged in his vote, he has been denied the equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Analogies to the United States Senate are inapposite. The United States Senate’s system of equal state representation was conceived out of compromise among independent states. Political subdivisions such as parishes are not sovereign entities; they are convenient administrative units of a state. And when the United States Constitution was framed there was no popular vote for senators.

Mathematical exactitude is not a constitutional requirement. Each voting district need not have precisely the same number of individuals per elected representative. The districts created must, however, come as close to the ideal of equality of voting strength as is practicable. Deviations will be allowed only if the plan constitutes a good faith effort to reach that ideal.

The Supreme Court permits minor deviations from the equality of voting strength principle in the interest of “insuring some voice to political subdivisions as political subdivisions.” A reapportionment plan may and should follow the boundaries of existing wards and parishes as long as it represents a good faith attempt to keep the number of persons per representative as close as possible to the ideal. But the use of parish lines to justify deviations from strict equality must not submerge population as the controlling criterion. If following existing parish and ward lines significantly dilutes the vote of any person, the plan is unconstitutional even if conceived in good faith.

II. Three simple tests or rules of thumb for determining the fairness of apportionment.

No magic formula exists to determine at what point underrepresentation passes from permissible deviation to unconstitutional deviation. Instead of placing ultimate reliance on a slide rule and a set of equations, the Supreme Court has made the ultimate issue whether under the particular circumstances existing in the individual state there has been a faithful adherence to a plan of population-based representation, with such minor deviations only as may occur in recognizing certain factors that are free from any taint of arbitrariness or discrimination.

Nevertheless several rough guides measure the extent of a reapportionment *207 plan’s deviations from the ideal. In Louisiana the ideal ratio of people to legislators is 83,513 for each senator, 31,019 for each representative.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
263 F. Supp. 202, 1966 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6657, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bannister-v-davis-laed-1966.