Lucas v. General Assembly of State of Colorado

• Citation: 377 U.S. 713,84 S.Ct. 1459,12 L.Ed.2d 632
• Decision Date: 15 June 1964
• Docket Number: FORTY-FOURTH,No. 508,508
• Parties: Andres LUCAS et al., etc., Appellants, v. TheGENERAL ASSEMBLY OF the STATE OF COLORADO et al
• Court: United States Supreme Court

377 U.S. 713

84 S.Ct. 1459

12 L.Ed.2d 632

Andres LUCAS et al., etc., Appellants,

v The FORTY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF the STATE OF COLORADO et al.

No. 508.

Argued March 31 and April 1, 1964.

Decided June 15, 1964.

[Syllabus from pages 713-714 intentionally omitted]

George Louis Creamer, Denver, Colo., Charles Ginsberg, Denver, Colo., for appellants.

Anthony F. Zarlengo and Stephen H. Hart, Denver, Colo., for appellees.

Solicitor Gen. Archibald Cox for United States, amicus curiae, by special leave of Court.

Mr. Chief Justice WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.

Involved in this case is an appeal from a decision of the Federal District Court for the District of Colorado upholding the validity, under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, of the apportionment of seats in the Colorado Legislature pursuant to the provisions of a constitutional amendment approved by the Colorado electorate in 1962.

I.

Appellants, voters, taxpayers and residents of counties in the Denver metropolitan area, filed two separate actions, consolidated for trial and disposition, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, in March and July 1962, challenging the constitutionality of the apportionment of seats in both houses of the Colorado General Assembly. Defendants below, sued in their representative capacities, included various officials charged with duties in connection with state elections. Plaintiffs below asserted that Art. V, §§ 45, 46, and 47, of the Colorado Constitution, and the statutes¹ implementing those constitutional provisions, result in gross inequalities and disparities with respect to their voting rights. They alleged that 'one of the inalienable rights of citizenship * * * is equality of franchise and vote, and that the concept of equal protection of the laws requires that every citizen be equally represented in the legislature of his State.' Plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief, and also requested the Court to order a constitution- ally valid apportionment plan into effect for purposes of the 1962 election of Colorado legislators. Proponents of the current apportionment scheme, which was then to be voted upon in a November 1962 referendum as proposed Amendment No. 7 to the Colorado Constitution, were permitted to intervene. A three-judge court was promptly convened.

On August 10, 1962, the District Court announced its initial decision.² Lisco v. McNichols, 208 F.Supp. 471. After holding that it had jurisdiction, that the issues presented were justiciable, and that grounds for abstention were lacking,³ the court below stated that the population disparities among various legislative districts under the existing apportionment 'are of sufficient magnitude to make out a prima facie case of invidious discrimination * * *.' However, because of the imminence of the primary and general elections, and since two constitutional amendments, proposed through the initiative procedure and prescribing rather different schemes for legislative apportionment, would be voted upon in the impending election, the District Court continued the cases without further action until after the November 1962 election. Colorado legislators were thus elected in 1962 pursuant to the provisions of the existing apportionment scheme.

At the November 1962 general election, the Colorado electorate adopted proposed Amendment No. 7 by a vote of 305,700 to 172,725, and defeated proposed Amendment No. 8 by a vote of 311,749 to 149,822. Amendment No. 8, rejected by a majority of the voters, prescribed an apportionment plan pursuant to which seats in both houses of the Colorado Legislature would purportedly be apportioned on a population basis.⁴ Amend- ment No. 7, on the other hand, provided for the apportionment of the House of Representatives on the basis of population, but essentially maintained the existing apportionment in the Senate, which was based on a combination of population and various other factors.

After the 1962 election the parties amended their pleadings so that the cases involved solely a challenge to the apportionment scheme established in the newly adopted Amendment No. 7. Plaintiffs below requested a declaration that Amendment No. 7 was unconstitu- tional under the Fourteenth Amendment since resulting in substantial disparities from population-based representation in the Senate, and asked for a decree reapportioning both houses of the Colorado Legislature on a population basis. After an extended trial, at which a variety of statistical and testimonial evidence regarding legislative apportionment in Colorado, past and present, was introduced, the District Court, on July 16, 1963, announced its decision on the merits. Lisco v. Love, 219 F.Supp. 922. Splitting 2-to-1, the court below concluded that the apportionment scheme prescribed by Amendment No. 7 comported with the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause, and thus dismissed the consolidated actions. In sustaining the validity of the senatorial apportionment provided for in Amendment No. 7, despite deviations from population-based representation, the District Court stated that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require 'equality of population within representation districts for each house of a bicameral state legislature.' Finding that the disparities from a population basis in the apportionment of Senate seats were based upon rational considerations, the court below stated that the senatorial apportionment under Amendment No. 7 'recognizes population as a prime, but not controlling, factor and gives effect to such important considerations as geography, compactness and contiguity of territory, accessibility, observance of natural boundaries, (and) conformity to historical divisions such as county lines and prior representation districts * * *.'⁵ Stressing also that the apportionment plan had been recently adopted by popular vote in a statewide referendum, the Court stated:

'(Plaintiffs') argument that the apportionment of the Senate by Amendment No. 7 is arbitrary, in- vidiously discriminatory, and without any rationality (has been answered by the) voters of Colorado * * *. By adopting Amendment No. 7 and by rejecting Amendment No. 8, which proposed to apportion the legislature on a per capita basis, the electorate has made its choice between the conflicting principles.'⁶

Concluding, the District Court stated:

'We believe that no constitutional question arises as to the actual, substantive nature of apportionment if the popular will has expressed itself. * * * In Colorado the liberal provisions for initiation of con- stitutional amendments permit the people to act—and they have done so. If they become dissatisfied with what they have done, a workable method of change is available. The people are free, within the framework of the Federal Constitution, to establish the governmental forms which they desire and when they have acted the courts should not enter the political wars to determine the rationality of such action.'⁷

In dissenting, District Judge Doyle stated that he regarded the senatorial apportionment under Amendment No. 7 as irrational and invidiously discriminatory, and that the constitutional amendment had not sufficiently remedied the gross disparities previously found by the District Court to exist in Colorado's prior apportionment scheme. Instead, he stated, the adopted plan freezes senatorial apportionment and merely retains the former system with certain minor changes. Equality of voting power in both houses is constitutionally required, the dissent stated, since there is no logical basis for distinguishing between the two bodies of the Colorado Legislature. In rejecting the applicability of the so-called federal analogy, Judge Doyle relied on this Court's decision in Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821. He concluded that, although absolute equality is a practical impossibility, legislative districting based substantially on population is constitutionally required, and that the disparities in the apportionment of Senate seats under Amendment No. 7's provisions cannot be rationalized.⁸

Notices of appeal from the District Court's decisions were timely filed, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 9, 1963. 375 U.S. 938, 84 S.Ct. 351, 11 L.Ed.2d 270.

II.

When this litigation was commenced, apportionment of seats in the Colorado General Assembly was based on certain provisions of the State Constitution and statutory provisions enacted to implement them. Article V, § 45, of the Colorado Constitution provided that the legislature 'shall revise and adjust the apportionment for senators and representatives * * * according to ratios to be fixed by law,' at the sessions following the state enumeration of inhabitants in 1885 and every 10 years thereafter, and following each decennial federal census. Article V. § 46, as amended in 1950, stated that '(t)he senate shall consist of not more than thirty-five and the house of not more than sixty-five members.' Article V, § 47, provided that:

'Senatorial and representative districts may be altered from time to time, as public convenience may require. When a senatorial or representative district shall be composed of two or more counties, they shall be contiguous, and the district as compact as may be. No county shall be divided in the formation of a senatorial or representative district.'

Article V, § 3, provides that senators shall be elected for four-year terms, staggered so that approximately one-half of the members of the Senate are elected every two years, and that all representatives shall be elected for two-year terms.

Pursuant to these general constitutional provisions, the Colorado General Assembly has periodically enacted detailed statutory provisions establishing legislative districts and prescribing the apportionment to such districts of seats in both houses of the Colorado Legislature....