Seaman v. Fedourich
| Decision Date | 09 July 1965 |
| Citation | 262 N.Y.S.2d 444,16 N.Y.2d 94,209 N.E.2d 778 |
| Parties | , 209 N.E.2d 778 Douglas W. SEAMAN et al., Respondents, v. Walter FEDOURICH et al., Constituting the Common Council of the City ofBinghamton, et al., Appellants, and Marion A. Nelson et al., Individually andas Councilmen of the City of Binghamton, Intervenors-Respondents. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
John V. Romagnoli, Corp. Counsel (Peter A. Daniels, Binghamton, of counsel), for appellants.
Willard E. Pierce, Jr., Binghamton, for respondents.
Stuart M. Pearis, Binghamton, for intervenors-respondents.
On this appeal, here by permission of the Appellate Division, we deal with the validity of a districting plan for an elective legislative body below the state level. 1
In January of this year, the plaintiffs, residents and qualified voters of the City of Binghamton, instituted an action against the several defendants, constituting the Common Council of that city, seeking to have the existing districting plan of that 13-member body declared unconstitutional on the ground that it offended against the equal protection clauses of the Federal and State Constitutions (U.S.Const., 14th Amdit.; N.Y.S.Const., art. I, § 11). Following the commencement of the action, the Mayor of Binghamton was added as a party defendant and four of the councilmen, all members of the political party with minority representation on that body, originally named as defendants were permitted to intervene and serve their own papers in support of the plaintiffs' position. The remaining defendants moved to dismiss the action, pursuant to CPLR 3211(a), primarily on the ground that the court lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter of the action because, in their words, 'the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction' of such cases. The plaintiffs countered by requesting that the motion be treated as one for summary judgment (CPLR 3211(c)) and that such relief be granted in their favor.
Justice SLOAN at Special Term concluded that no triable issue of fact existed and directed summary judgment for the plaintiffs. In so doing he declared that 'the present scheme * * * deprives each of the plaintiffs of his right to equal representation in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, and Article I, § 11 of the the Constitution of the State of New York'. (45 Misc.2d 940, 943-944, 258 N.Y.S.2d 152, 156.) The court also announced that it would retain jurisdiction of the action in order that it might thereafter entertain 'an application by any of the parties for a review of any * * * plan adopted by local law'. (45 Misc.2d, at p. 944, 258 N.Y.S.2d, at p. 156.) No appeal was taken from that determination.
Following a public hearing in April, the Binghamton Common Council passed Local Law No. 1 of 1965, adopting a new districting plan. Approved by the defendant Mayor, it was thereafter filed with the Broome County Board of Elections for the purpose of being submitted, pursuant to section 23 of the Municipal Home Rule Law, Consol.Laws, c. 36-a, to a referendum. However, before the date set for such submission, Justice SLOAN, upon application of the plaintiffs and the intervening defendants, held that the proposed districting plan still failed to meet constitutional requirements. The Appellate Division affirmed without opinion and, as indicated, granted the defendants leave to appeal to this court.
As presently constituted, the Binghamton Common Council in made up of 13 members. Each is elected by the inhabitants of one of the city's 13 'wards' and has the power to cast one vote, of equal weight with the others, on matters coming before the Council. According to the latest United States census, that of 1960, the population of the wards varies from 542 in the 9th ward to 11,426 in the 4th ward. In fact, on the basis of the existing scheme, it is possible for 7 councilmen those from the 2d, 13th and 7th through 11th wards representing less than 27% of the population of the city to enact laws opposed by and, by the same token, to defeat legislation favored by members representing over 73% of Binghamton's citizens. 2
By the terms of Local Law No. 1 of 1965, enacted after Special Term's decision invalidating the existing plan, it was proposed that the Council be reduced from 13 to 7 members, each to be elected from one of seven 'districts', the boundaries of which would follow those of the former 'wards' with certain of the less populous wards simply being incorporated into the new and larger districts. The population of each of the new districts again, as indicated by the 1960 census varies from 7,863 in the 6th district to 15,808 in the 7th district. 3
The defendants attempt to justify the new plan by proffering and relying upon population figures based not on the 1960 census but on their own surveys and estimates which, it is to be noted, reduce somewhat the discrepancies between the various districts:
District Population
1 9,615
2 10,501
3 10,600
4 11,588
5 9,640
6 8,640
7 12,003
These estimates, employed by the Council in drafting the new plan, were arrived at, first, by 'up-dating' the 1960 census figures, by taking into account, in the defendants' words, 'various factors which affect the population (of Binghamton) such as movement of people, downtown urban renewal, extensive highway construction, and future available areas for expansion, all based on proper statistical projection of known facts', and, second, by excluding the 3,217 persons (included by the census) who are patients in the Binghamton State Hospital located within the new 7th district.
Reasoning that '(r)esidents in or at the Binghamton State Hospital are a part of the population and may not be eliminated from * * * proposed Councilmanic District No. 7' and that '(t)he approximations of increase and decrease of population by reason of population movement and other factors are at best estimates and are not to be accepted in lieu of the Federal census' (46 Misc.2d 289, 291, 258 N.Y.S.2d 1008), Justice SLOAN at Special Term rejected the defendants' population figures and, looking to the data supplied by the 1960 census, concluded that the Local Law did not meet constitutional requirements.
The present action was, of course, prompted by recent Supreme Court cases holding that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that representation in both houses of a state's legislature be substantially proportionate to the number of people represented under the principle of 'one person, one vote.' 4 There can be little doubt, and it is not disputed by the defendants, that that principle is applicable to elective legislative bodies exercising general governmental powers as the municipal level (cf. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 575, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506; Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110), and such as been the conclusion reached by several courts called upon to consider the question. 5
It is axiomatic that local governmental units are creations of, and exercise only those powers delegated to them by, the State (N.Y.Const., art. IX, §§ 1, 2; Municipal Home Rule Law, §§ 10, 11) and, certainly, if the latter may exercise its legislative powers only in a body constituted on a population basis, any general elective municipal organ to which it delegates certain of its powers must, by a parity of reasoning, be subjected to the same constitutional requirement. Viewed in another way, if, as seems evident, the thrust of the Supreme Court's decisions is that it is inherent within the concept of 'equal protection' that a person has a substantial right to be heard and to participate, through his elected representatives, in the business of government on an equal basis with all other individuals, no reason or justification exists for differentiating, so far as that right is concerned, between the general governmental business carried on in the highest legislative organs of the State and that conducted, by virtue of a delegation of authority, in municipal law-making bodies. (See, generally, Weinstein, The Effect of the Federal Reapportionment Decisions on Counties and Other Forms of Municipal Government, 65 Col.L.Rev. 21.)
Nor can there be any question that the courts of New York, obliged as they are to uphold the Federal Constitution as well as this State's Constitution whose equal protection clause, we have said, is as broad in its overage as that of the Fourteenth Amendment (see Dorsey v. Stuyvesant Town Corp., 299 N.Y. 512, 530, 544, 87 N.E.2d 541, 548, 556, 14 A.L.R.2d 133) are vested with jurisdiction of actions brought to vindicate the right to equal representation. (See Matter of Orans, 15 N.Y.2d 339, 258 N.Y.S.2d 825, 206 N.E.2d 854; Maryland Committee for Fair Representation v. Tawes, 377 U.S. 656, 674, 84 S.Ct. 1429, 12 L.Ed.2d 575.)
This brings us to that aspect of the decision below invalidating Binghamton's Local Law No. 1 of 1965.
The 'overriding objective' of any legislative apportionment (or districting) plan, the Supreme Court has made clear, 'must be substantial equlity of population among the various districts, so that the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen'. (Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 579, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 1390, supra.) In light of this objective, 'the proper judicial approach' in evaluating the constitutional validity of any particular plan, the court went on to say in a companion case to Reynolds, 'is to ascertain whether, under the particular circumstances existing' in the individual locality whose legislative scheme is in issue, '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'. (Roman v. Sincock, ...
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