In this
earlier post, I commented on a cert petition filed by Ken Starr in a
case involving the right of non-resident parents to proportional representation
on school boards where their children go to high school. The Third Circuit
had upheld a New Jersey law that gave the parents no more than one seat on
the school board, even in a case where their students made up 50& of
the school board's students.
Steven Sholk of Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione was kind
enough to send me an amicus brief supporting the cert petition that his firm
and Professor Richard Briffault have written supporting the cert petition
(amici are 17 N.J. "sending" school districts). Among other arguments made
in the amicus brief is an argument about the Supreme Court's Holt
case. In Holt, the Supreme Court upheld the denial of the vote to
non-residents who were subject to the police jurisdiction of a nearby municipality.
The amicus brief makes the following argument: "The [Supreme] Court's citation
[in Holt] to [an earlier 8th Circuit case] suggests that even after
Holt, when one local government unit wields substantial and direct
authority over nonresidents, those nonresidents are entitled to vote and
to representation under the one person, one vote doctrine in the elected
body that runs the government that exercises extraterritorial power."
I need to give this point more thought, but at first blush I find this argument
difficult to accept. Besides the range of administrative problems presented
by such a rule (when is there "substantial and direct authority over non-residents?"),
a strict one person, one vote rule applied to affected non-residents may
further inhibit the willingness of local governments to engage in regional
cooperation. This is a point Richard Briffault, Bruce Cain, and others have
made about the application of one person, one vote on the local level applied
to residents.
--
Rick Hasen
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow
Loyola Law School
919 South Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211
(213)736-1466 - voice
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html