125 Minn. 336 | Minn. | 1914
The question presented in this proceeding is the validity of the reapportionment act of 1913. Chapter 91, p. 81, Laws 1913. By the prior apportionment of legislative districts Fillmore county constituted the Fifth district and was entitled to elect one senator and two representatives. Under the act of 1913 Fillmore and Houston counties were placed in one district with the right to elect one senator and three representatives; one for each county, and one for the district composed of the two counties. Upon the theory that the act of 1913 was invalid, because in violation of the Constitution, relator herein tendered his filing to the county auditor of Fillmore county as a candidate for state senator under the prior apportionment law. The auditor refused to accept the filing, and this proceeding in mandamus followed. Issue was joined in the court below, upon which the court held the act of 1913 a valid apportionment, and a general demurrer to the alternative writ was sustained. Relator appealed.
The only question presented is the constitutionality of the statute. It is contended by relator that it violates the Constitution in three particulars, namely: (1) That the legislature had no power or authority to reapportion the legislative districts at the 1913 session, that being the second session of the legislature subsequent to the last census; (2) that certain parts of the state, being two election precincts in the city of St. Paul, were not included in any senatorial district; and (3) that the apportionment is not equal throughout the state in proportion to the population thereof.
1. The first contention is answered by the construction to be given section 23 of article 4, of the state Constitution, which provides as follows:
“The legislature shall provide by law for an enumeration of the inhabitants of this state in the year 1865, and every tenth year thereafter. At their first session after each enumeration so made and also at their first session after each enumeration made by the authority of the United States, the legislature shall have the power to' prescribe the bounds of congressional, senatorial and representative districts and to apportion anew the senators and representatives*339 among the several districts according to the provisions of section second of this article.”
A Federal census was taken and completed during the year 1910, and the legislature convened in regular session in January, 1911. No reapportionment act was passed at that session, and it is the claim of relator that its authority to do so ceased on the adjournment of that session. In other words, that the provisions of the Constitution quoted are to be construed as a limitation upon the right of reapportionment and that it can be exercised only at a session of the legislature following a state or Federal census. A plausible and persuasive argument was made by counsel for relator in support of that view of the Constitution, but reflection satisfies us that it ought not to prevail. The purpose of the constitutional requirement, or the authority thereby granted, if construed as a grant of power, was to ensure to the different sections of the state proportionate representation in the legislative department. The framers of the instrument no doubt concluded, and properly so, that the most appropriate time to accomplish that object was immediately following a state or Federal census, by which the number and location of the people so entitled to representation would be clearly and definitely determined. There is probably no doubt that, in the absence of some constitutional limitation upon the subject, the legislature would possess the power to redistrict the state at will, for that department is clothed with the right to exercise any and all powers of government where no restrictions are expressly or by necessary implication imposed by the Constitution. Or, as otherwise expressed, the Constitution is generally construed as a limitation and not a grant of power. State v. City of Mankato, 117 Minn. 458, 136 N. W. 264, 41 L.R.A.(N.S.) 111. And where a particular act of the legislature is questioned on constitutional grounds it is not the justification therefor that must be pointed out, but the clause or provision of the Constitution which prohibits its enactment. Black, Const. Law 35. It is quite probable, taking the language thereof as the basis for the remark, that the framers of our Constitution understood at the time that a power was thereby conferred upon the legislature in this respect, which otherwise did not exist. The language is that, at the first session
2. The second contention, namely, that a part of the state was entirely omitted from the act does not require extended discussion. The territory claimed to have been omitted is the eighth and ninth precincts of the Ninth ward of the city of St. Paul. An examination of the act discloses that both these precincts are expressly placed in the first representative district of the Thirty-eighth senatorial district of Eamsey county, and are therefore necessarily within that senatorial district. The failure to name them in the part of the act defining that senatorial district was evidently an oversight, and is not fatal to the law.
') Our Constitution provides that representation in both houses of ¡i the legislature shall be apportioned equally in proportion to the-''population of the state. Section 2, article 4. We find in this apñ portionment act not such an arbitrary departure from the rule of ¡¿I equal representation as to justify the court, within the rule stated, in declaring the act unconstitutional. It is true that the several senatorial and representative districts do not contain the same or approximately the same population. The unit for the senatorial districts is about 30,000 population. Some of the districts, as defined by the act, contain a greater and some a less population than that unit. But that result was evidently unavoidable. There is a total lj absence of any suggestion of arbitrary action on the part of the legislature, in total disregard of the rule of equality, and no evidence to
Order affirmed.