Supreme Court: PA House, Senate Districts to Stand

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent

HARRISBURG – Finally, Pennsylvania will have new legislative districts.

In a unanimous decision announced Wednesday, the state Supreme Court upheld a redistricting plan drawn by a commission of legislative leaders and ordered it to be used for the next round of legislative elections in 2014.

The plan had been challenged by residents for containing too many legislative districts that unnecessarily divided counties and municipalities, but the court dismissed those appeals.

A previous plan prepared by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, or LRC, had been rejected by the Supreme Court in January 2012, largely because the court found it contained too many county and municipality splits.

But the commission was given a second shot at drawing constitutional maps and produced what the court said was a “better,” but “not perfect,” plan, according to the decision penned by Chief Justice Ron Castille.

“The LRC’s new plan is not perfect,” Castille wrote. “By necessity, a reapportionment plan is not required to solve every possible problem or objection in order to pass constitutional muster.”

The commission charged with redrawing the district lines consisted of Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester; Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny; House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny; House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny; and and retired Superior Court Judge Stephen McEwen, who was appointed by the state Supreme Court as chairman.

Costa was the lone dissenting vote on the redistricting plans when they were approved by the commission in April 2012.

Costa on Wednesday said he was disappointed by the court ruling.

“Our belief is that the map approved by the commission is partisan and only serves narrow, partisan political interests,” Costa said. “We believe there are better alternatives.”

Pileggi said politics are a part of the redistricting process, and the court ruling acknowledged that there are subjective issues at play in political map-making.

“As long as the explicit constitutional requirements are met, it does not make the process constitutionally invalid,” he said.

Wednesday’s ruling marks the end of a long saga that sets new parameters for how legislative redistricting will be accomplished in Pennsylvania.

In its 4-3 ruling in January 2012, the court rejected the first set of legislative maps created and approved by the commission.

In that case, the court agreed with a challenge brought by Amanda Holt, a resident of Allentown who argued that the commission’s maps contained too many districts that unfairly divided counties and municipalities.  Holt developed her own “alternative maps” with fewer splits and Castille found her argument compelling enough to join the three Democratic justices in ordering the commission to try again.

The commission redrew the maps and the court heard the case in October.

As she had done successfully in the first round of appeals, Holt and her team argued that the new maps were contrary to law because they contained more county and municipal splits than were “required by law.”

In the maps she created, Holt had only 86 splits in the House plan and 17 splits in the state Senate plan.

The maps created by the commission had 221 splits in the state House map and 37 splits in the state Senate plan.

But the second time around, the commission’s lawyers argued that they did not have to meet the standard established by Holt.  Unlike her, the commission needed to reach a political consensus on the district maps, which required more subjective issues than simply looking at the number of splits.

In Wednesday’s ruling, Castille said the issue of splits was “close” but the court determined the new maps passed constitutional muster.

As the court pointed out, its job is not to weight whether an alternative plan is “better” than the plan offered by the commission, but only if the commission’s plan meets the constitutional obligations.

Holt said she was disappointed by the ruling, but was still reviewing Castille’s opinion and could not comment.

She said she was glad to have played a role in changing how the process played out.

“It’s undeniable that the districts – whatever they end up looking like – are definitely an improvement from what was originally proposed,” Holt said.

Because the redistricting process was delayed after the Supreme Court rejected the commission’s maps in 2012, the elections last year took place on the old district lines, drawn in 2001.

The new maps will be used for the 2014 legislative elections, according to the Supreme Court ruling.

The 6-0 ruling did not include former Justice Joan Orie Melvin, who was suspended from the court when the case was heard and deliberated.  She was convicted on multiple counts of political corruption and voluntarily stepped down from the court in March.

The newly-approved state House and state Senate maps can be viewed here.

Contact Eric Boehm at eric@PAIndependent.com