Brown v. Thomson

Justice Brennan filed the dissenting opinion. The justices could not agree with the majority's findings even though appellants had only challenged a part of the reapportionment plan. The minority opinion suggested the Court did not observe the general constitutionality of the plan. The Equal Protection Clause requires a state to form legislative districts as evenly as possible. Thus, the minority justices felt that the Court failed to consider four important issues: whether deviation was higher than 10 percent, (considered automatically discriminative according to Connor v. Finch); the validity of the reasons for the state's "inability" to decrease deviation in population equality; whether the plan truly served state policy in this matter; and whether such deviation was within constitutional limits, even if the state proved that deviations were justified by the state's intent.