State's Motion To Affirm In Hawaii Reapportionment Case

by Robert Thomas, Inverse Condemnation, December 12, 2013

Here's the State of Hawaii's Motion to Affirm, filed earlier today. This brief responds to the Jurisdictional Statement, filed two months ago in the case now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court which challenges the 2012 Hawaii Reapportionment Plan. The State has hired some very big gun Supreme Court litigators (at who knows what cost to Hawaii taxpayers) to try and convince the Court that this case isn't worthy of further review.

We represent the appellants in the case, who assert that the 2012 Plan's exclusion of 108,767 military, military families, and university students from Hawaii's population count falls short of Equal Protection's requirement of representational equality. We won't go into the details of the arguments in the Motion to Affirm, since you can read it yourself. Besides, we will be filing a short opposition with the Court, which will contain our responses.

After the briefing is complete, the Court will consider the case and tell us whether the District Court's decision upholding the Plan will be summarily affirmed, or whether the Court believes there are substantial questions requiring a full briefing and argument on the merits.

Stay tuned. We'll post our Opposing Brief when filed.

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