Karcher v. Daggett

The justices felt appellants failed to consider a possible error in the 1980 census and appropriately compensate for a possible undercount of voters in the state. Citing expert evidence of a Princeton University demographer that was presented by appellees (as well as several published studies regarding undercounts in the 1950, 1960, and 1970 censuses), the Court found the Feldman Plan flawed. As such, the justices felt deviations in the Feldman Plan could have been averted or substantially reduced. Like the district court, the Supreme Court took exception the state's failure to consider other plans that reapportioned voting districts with a lower standard maximum deviation. Thus, the Court affirmed the ruling of the lower court on the grounds that the state failed to show good-faith and offer an acceptable explanation for the difference in population number per congressional district.

Justice Stevens delivered a separate concurring opinion. (The U.S. Supreme Court was divided and Justice Stevens had the decisive vote.) As he understood the appellees argument, "district boundaries were unconstitutional because they were product of political gerrymandering." Thus he believed the appellees' claim that the state's apportionment plan had "firmer roots in the Constitution than those provided by Article I, 2".

Stevens pointed out that articles one and two only provided that "representatives should be apportioned among several states," since there were no specific guidelines on how congressional districts in a state should be composed. Instead, Stevens found the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment more applicable in rendering his decision. He maintained a state's power to define groups of voters was in no way constitutionally limited. Thus, Stevens found no merit in the state's claim that disparity between districts should protect minority voting districts reasoning that, "If they serve no purpose other than to favor one segment--whether racial, ethnic, religious, economic, or political--that may occupy a position of strength at a particular point in time, or to disadvantage a politically weak segment of the community, they violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection."

Stevens observed that an absolute numerical population equality was impossible because of population shifts, mortality, errors in the census, and other justifiable reasons. Nonetheless, in Stevens's opinion, the population equality standard was reasonable because it could be "judicially manageable," easy to understand, and the figures were readily obtained from the census.

Moreover, Stevens believed that the Equal Protection Clause did not extend its protection only to a certain class of citizens and reasoned it was particularly worthy to consider that "its protection against vote dilution cannot be confined to racial groups." Further since that clause proscribed racial gerrymandering it was reasonable to assume its protection extended to "other cognizable groups of voters as well." He further believed that there was no need to "create a need" to protect against political gerrymandering just because a group of voters shared "common ethnic, racial, or religious background." Thus, while Stevens's rationale diverged from the majority opinion, he nonetheless chose to join in their decision to affirm the ruling of the District Court that the Feldman Plan represented a gross constitutional violation.