Elections-Congressional District Map-Constitutionality

Plaintiffs appealed the trial court’s judgment upholding the legislature’s new Congressional district map as constitutional. Plaintiffs argued that the map violated the constitution’s compactness, contiguity, and equal population requirements.

Where plaintiffs failed to show that any deviation from the principle of compactness was not motivated by other reasonable considerations like population density, natural boundaries, municipal boundary lines and historical boundary lines of prior district maps, and instead the evidence indicated that the new map was more compact than prior maps, the court held that there was sufficient evidence for the trial court to determine that the new map was not unconstitutional.

Judgment is affirmed.

Healey v. State (MLW No. 84794/Case No. SC101570 – 37 pages) (Supreme Court of Missouri, Russell, J.) Appealed from circuit court, Jackson County, Caine, J. (J. Andrew Hirth, Columbia; Abha Khanna, Seattle, WA; Harleen Kaur Gambhir, Tina Meng Morrison and Julianna D. Astarita, Washington, D.C.; Gillian R. Wilcox and Jason A. Orr, Kansas City; Kristin M. Mulvey and Jonathan D. Schmid, St.  Louis for appellants) (Louis J. Capozzi III, Kathleen T. Hunker, Joseph Kiernan and Madeline S. Landsdell, St. Louis; Marc H. Ellinger and Stephanie S. Bell, Jefferson City; John M. Gore and Nathaniel C. Sutton, Washington, D.C. for respondent)