After West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals justices upheld the Legislature's House and Senate redistricting plans in a November ruling, lawmakers and challengers finally got some answers in the form of a Feb. 13 opinion.
The five cases challenged the constitutionality of the Legislature's redistricting plans and were taken up by state Supreme Court justices in a November hearing. Petitioners' arguments focused on the one-person one-vote principle.
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin signed the Senate bill into law in August and signed the House's plan into law a month later. Lawsuits started piling up shortly after bills were signed into law.
The House bill created 67 districts with 20 being multi-member and 47 single-member districts. This was an increase of four single-member districts.
Several petitioners took issue with multi-member districts, but justices said there is no constitutional or statutory prohibition of the utilization of these districts.
South Charleston lawyer Thornton Cooper filed the first legal challenge Oct. 13 against the House's plan, taking issue with the division of counties and the deviation the Legislature used in determining the districts.
Mason and Putnam counties jointly filed a lawsuit against the House district boundaries a few weeks later, claiming the plan violated the state Constitution because of the "unnecessary" division of counties and the lack of equal representation.
Monroe County was the last to file suit against the House's delegate district plan. Monroe County Commission Attorney Jeffry Pritt said the redistricting law placed his county with more populous areas in Raleigh and Summers County.
Justices said splitting counties is not against the constitution, however. Justices cited case law that ruled earlier that crossing county boundaries was permissible and that delegate residency dispersal was also allowed.
"Furthermore, there is no authority prohibiting the division of a county into portions and thereafter attaching those portions to contiguous portions of adjacent counties to form delegate districts."
The senatorial redistricting law also was under fire.
Monongalia and Wood counties jointly filed their lawsuit Nov. 4, arguing districts were not compact, bounded by county lines or equal in population.
Cooper filed his second suit claiming the senatorial districts deviated more than it should have from the ideal population of 109,000. Cooper also offered several plans to the court.
However, Supreme Court justices were reluctant to completely take over redistricting matters and said their goal is to decide the constitutionality — not to pick the best plan.
"If, however a particular policy is to be advanced in the creation of legislation or in the evaluative process, its genesis is properly within the chambers of the West Virginia Legislature, rather than the chambers of the Supreme Court of Appeals."
In the opinion, justices said the 9.99 percent population deviation in both House and Senate plans is justified the constitutional requirement of the Equal Protection Clause.
According to the opinion, an earlier case ruled legislative redistricting deviation less than 10 percent constitutional. With respect to the one-person one-vote principle, the state's highest court ruled that although it should be a "primary goal, some flexibility must be granted to states in the formulation of redistricting plans." The opinion additionally stated that only "substantial population equality is required."
Petitioners also argued the Legislature unnecessarily divided 13 counties between 17 senatorial districts and divided 37 of the states 1,856 precincts. Justices said that this argument was "without merit."
"Whether Senate Districts 1, 6, and 12 might have been drawn to be more geometrically compact is not for the court to decide," the opinion stated. "The shapes of the districts were crafted as a result of the legislative process, which involved the balancing of various concerns."
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