Barbour, MSGOP Redistricting Response

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    IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

    FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF MISSISSIPPI

    JACKSON DIVISION

    MISSISSIPPI STATE CONFERENCE OF THE

    NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THEADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE,

    THOMAS PLUNKETT, ROD WOULLARD,

    and HOLLIS WATKINS, on behalf of

    themselves and all other similarly situated PLAINTIFFS

    v. NO. 3:11-cv-159 TSL-EGJ-LG

    HALEY BARBOUR, in his official capacity as

    Governor of the State of Mississippi, JIM HOOD,

    in his official capacity as Attorney General of the

    State of Mississippi, and DELBERT HOSEMANN,in his official capacity as Secretary of State of the

    State of Mississippi, as members of the State Board

    of Election Commissioners; THE MISSISSIPPI

    REPUBLICAN PARTY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE;

    THE MISSISSIPPI DEMOCRATIC PARTY EXECUTIVE

    COMMITTEE; and CONNIE COCHRAN, in her official

    Capacity as Chairman of the Hinds County, Mississippi

    Board of Election Commissioners, on behalf of herself

    and all others similarly situated DEFENDANTS

    and

    APPORTIONMENT AND ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

    OF THE MISSISSIPPI HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES;

    MISSISSIPPI STATE SENATE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS

    AND STATE DEMOCRATIC SENATORS, in their individual

    capacities; TERRY C. BURTON, SIDNEY BONDURANT,

    BECKY CURRIE and MARY ANN STEVENS INTERVENORS

    ______________________________________________________________________________

    JOINT RESPONSE OF GOVERNOR HALEY BARBOUR AND THE MISSISSIPPI

    REPUBLICAN PARTY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE IN OPPOSITION TO MOTION

    OF INTERVENOR HOUSE APPORTIONMENT AND ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

    ______________________________________________________________________________

    Like a parricide suing to collect his parents life insurance, the intervenor House

    Apportionment and Elections Committee (hereinafter the House Committee) asks this Court to

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    order into effect a redistricting plan for the House of Representatives that it could not sell to the

    Mississippi Senate. [Dkt. 82]. Indeed, it is not even clear which House plan the House

    Committee is trying to sell to this Court, because two different plans were adopted on the House

    floor. Neither the House plan nor the Senate plan, which the House accepted only on the

    condition that the Senate would not exercise its constitutional duty to scrutinize the House plan,

    should be ordered into effect by this Court. Because the two unicamerally concocted plans fail

    to satisfy Mississippi law or federal law, particularly the equitable considerations governing

    judicially imposed remedial plans, Governor Haley Barbour and the Mississippi Republican

    Party Executive Committee (hereinafter the Republican Party) urge this Court to deny the

    motion.1

    ARGUMENT

    I. THE TWO PLANS ADOPTED SEPARATELY BY THE HOUSE AND SENATE

    ARE NOT LEGISLATIVE PLANS TO WHICH THIS COURT SHOULD DEFER.

    A. The Legislature has not adopted a redistricting plan by joint resolution as

    254 of the Mississippi Constitution requires.

    The Mississippi Constitution very clearly mandates that state legislative redistricting be

    accomplished by joint resolution of both Houses of the Legislature. Miss. Const. 254. That

    section also clearly requires that such joint resolution be passed by majority vote of all members

    of each house. There are fifty-two (52) members of the Mississippi Senate and one hundred

    twenty-two (122) members of the House (the membership of both houses of the Legislature is

    also defined in 254).

    1 Plaintiffs [Dkt. 86] and the Mississippi Democratic Party Executive Committee [Dkt. 83] have

    joined the House Committees motion. Attorney General Jim Hood has filed a motion seeking the same

    relief. [Dkt. 89] Plaintiffs have also filed a motion asking the Court to order the Attorney General to

    submit the un-enacted House and Senate Plans to the Department of Justice for review under 5 of the

    Voting Rights Act. [Dkt. 91] The arguments of those parties essentially duplicate those made by the

    House Committee and should be rejected for the same reasons.

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    In the past, each House of the Legislature acting separately, following what has been

    described as a gentlemens agreement, not defined in the Constitution or even in the rules

    adopted by the Legislature regarding its operation and conduct, determined how to redistrict its

    own membership. The full Legislature then adopted the separately-crafted redistricting plans for

    each house as part of a joint resolution as required by 254. That process did not occur this

    year.

    In fact, when the Senate refused to accept the House-passed plan and invited

    conference (meaning that the Senate offered to and did appoint conferees to a conference

    committee to attempt to work out differences and to come to agreement on a plan that might be

    jointly adopted as required by 254), the House, acting through its elected Speaker, refused to

    confer and to appoint conferees.2

    Later, near the end of the legislative session, the House

    amended its earlier plan and voted to amend a Senate Concurrent Resolution to forward the

    newly-passed House plan to the Senate for a vote. The Senate, based on the joint resolution

    requirement of 254, declined to consider or vote on the new House plan.3

    Clearly, there is no legislative plan as defined by the Constitution upon which this

    Court can rely. Indeed, thefailure of a bill to be enacted evidences a legislative policy that the

    bill isnot desired by the legislature. Shayer v. Kirkpatrick, 541 F. Supp. 922, 932 (W.D. Mo.

    1982) (three-judge court) (emphasis added). Therefore, this Court cannot simply embrace as

    2 Those facts are apparent from the legislative history attached by plaintiffs as Exhibit A to their

    joinder in the House Committee motion [Dkt. 86]. Also, see House Resolution No. 93, A ResolutionUrging the Speaker of the House of Representatives to Appoint Conferees on Joint Resolution 201, To

    Negotiate a Redistricting Plan, which was introduced by 55 Representatives on March 23 but died in

    committee. A copy of H.R. 93 and its History of Actions are attached as Exhibit 1 and are available at

    http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/2011/pdf/history/HR/HR0093.xml.

    3The affidavit of Chairman Reynolds, attached as Exhibit 1 to the response of the House

    Committee in opposition to the Republican Partys motion for appointment of expert [Dkt. 88], confirms

    that this second House plan did not receive a vote in the Senate.

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    [its] own the bill that went the furthest or that experts believe would have or could have passed.

    Id. Such action would be a massive intrusion into the legislative process. Id. This Court

    would, in effect, be amending the rules for enacting legislation in the State of Mississippi if it

    granted the relief requested by the House Committee. Id. Ordering into effect plans that the

    Legislature itself refused to enact cannot be justified as an act of deference to state policy. The

    only state districting policies in force that have the actualapproval of the Legislature are found

    in Miss. Code Ann. 5-3-101 (Rev. 2002). This Court should follow those policies, not the un-

    enacted preferences of legislators who defaulted on their constitutional responsibility to

    redistrict. Shayer, 541 F. Supp. at 932 (Other than the state constitutions compact and

    contiguous requirements, state policies are difficult to discern. Following them is not required

    by state law, so we have given the compact and contiguous requirements preeminence over all

    other state policies.).

    For this Court to grant the House Committees motion also would ensure that 254 will

    never be applied as Mississippi voters intended. The court in Carstens v. Lamm, 543 F. Supp. 68

    (D. Colo. 1982) (three-judge court), made this very point in refusing to adopt a plan that was

    passed by both houses of the Colorado legislature but vetoed by the states governor. Id. at 78-

    79. There, the plaintiffs argued that [s]ince redistricting is primarily the responsibility of the

    State Legislature, the last plan enacted by the legislature (but vetoed by the governor)

    represents current state policy on redistricting and should receive priority during the Courts

    deliberations. Id. at 78. The court rejected that argument because [t]he Colorado Constitution

    explicitly provide[d] that every bill passed by the General Assembly shall be signed by the

    Governor before it becomes law. Id. at 79. Apropos of this case, the court reasoned that [t]o

    take the [plaintiffs] position to its logical conclusion, a partisan state legislature could simply

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    pass any bill it wanted, wait for a gubernatorial veto, file suit on the issue and have the Court

    defer to its proposal. Id. But the court refused to do so, explaining that it would not override

    the Governors veto when the General Assembly did not do so. Id.

    Here too, the Legislature has not adopted any redistricting plan according to the

    procedures explicitly provided for in the Mississippi Constitution. Those legislators who

    disagreed with the proposed planswith good reason, see infraprevented their adoption,

    exercising an effective veto over the plans. Yet the House Committee now wants this Court to

    adopt the plans anyway and override the requirements of 254 of the Mississippi Constitution.

    As Carstens points out, if the House and Senate can each achieve by judicial decree a

    redistricting plan satisfactory to that bodys members, why would conferees ever be appointed to

    attempt to reach a compromise on a joint resolution, as 254 requires? To grant the House

    Committees motion would guarantee that, every ten years, the Legislature will adjourn without

    attempting to reach a compromise and that its members will troop before this Court to seek

    enforcement of each bodys favored plan for itself. That is not what 254 requires, and that is

    not the proper role for a federal court charged with enforcing federal law.

    B. Plans That The Legislature Refused To Adopt Are Not Legislative Plans.

    At the April 22 status conference, citing Burns v. Richardson, 384 U.S. 73 (1966),

    counsel for the House Committee argued that the House and Senate plans should be considered

    legislative plans for purposes of the one-person, one-vote mandate despite the fact that the

    Legislature refused to adopt them. Burns does not support the Committees counterintuitive

    argument. Plans that the Legislature refuses to adopt are not legislative plans as a matter of

    either law or logic.

    In Burns, the district court held that the Hawaii state senate was unconstitutionally

    malapportioned and ordered the Hawaii legislature to enact three separate statutes: one to

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    establish an interim apportionment plan for the 1966 elections and two others to amend the

    Hawaii constitution as necessary to implement a permanent reapportionment plan. Id. at 80. The

    full legislature subsequently enacted an interim apportionment plan, but the district court held

    that the plan was unconstitutional not because it resulted in population disparities but solely

    because it employed multi-member legislative districts. Id. at 86. The Supreme Court held

    that the district court erred in enjoining use of the interim plan because Equal Protection Clause

    did not require use of single-member districts. Id. at 88. The Court also upheld Hawaiis use of

    registered voters as the basis for apportionment. See id. at 90-97.

    Burns was decided nine years before the Court held that unless there are persuasive

    justifications, a court-ordered reapportionment plan of a state legislature must avoid use of

    multimember districts, and, as well, must ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with

    little more than de minimis variation. Chapman v. Meier, 420 U.S. 1, 26-27 (1975). Therefore,

    Burns did not discuss the differences between the standards applicable to court-ordered plans and

    those applicable to legislative plans. Nonetheless, the Court has since describedBurns as having

    treated the proposed plan as a legislative plan, despite the fact that the Hawaii Legislature was

    without power to reapportion itself absent a constitutional amendment. McDaniel v. Sanchez,

    452 U.S. 130, 143 n.21 (1981). In McDaniel, the Court went on to hold that the fact that a

    reapportionment plan was devised by a county commission in response to an order of a federal

    court did not change its character as a legislative plan for purposes of 5 of the Voting Rights

    Act. Id. at 146; see also Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U.S. 535, 542-49 (1978) (opinions of White and

    Powell, JJ.) (holding that a plan enacted by a city council in response to a federal court order was

    a legislative plan and thus did not violate the rule against court-ordered multimember districts).

    As the Court explained, the essential characteristic of a legislative plan is the exercise of

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    legislative judgment. The fact that particular requirements of state law may not be satisfied

    before a plan is proposed to a federal court does not alter this essential characteristic.

    McDaniel, 452 U.S. at 152 (citing Wise, 437 U.S. at 548 (Powell, J.): The essential point is that

    the Dallas City Council exercised a legislative judgment, reflecting the policy choices of the

    elected representatives of the people.).

    Critically, in Wise, inMcDaniel, and inBurns, the legislative bodyas a whole exercised

    a legislative judgment. Wise, 437 U.S. at 548 (Powell, J). In Wise, the Dallas City Council

    exercised a legislative judgment (id.) by adopting a resolution proposing a plan to the district

    court and then by enacting an ordinance adopting the plan (see id. at 545-46 (White, J.)).

    Likewise, in McDaniel, the County Commissioners Court officially adopted the plan

    submit[ted] to the District Court. 452 U.S. at 135. And inBurns, the Hawaii legislature as a

    wholeenacted the reapportionment plan at issue. 384 U.S. at 80-81. While particular state-law

    requirements were not satisfied by the plans at issue in those cases, in each case there was an

    unequivocal exercise of legislative judgment in response to a federal court order. McDaniel,

    452 U.S. at 152. Here, in stark contrast, the Legislature hasnot exercised legislative judgment.

    Indeed, the Legislaturescomplete failure to act is the only reason this lawsuit is necessary, and

    theonly discernible legislative judgment is the Legislatures unwillingness to enact either of

    the plans that the House Committee now asks this Court to impose by court order. Because the

    Legislature has not exercised judgment, Burns and progeny are inapposite, and the un-enacted

    House and Senate plans cannot be considered legislative plans for purposes of one person, one

    vote.

    Put simply, a plan that the relevant legislative body has never approved is not a

    legislative plan simply because it has some measure of support among legislators. Clark v.

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    Putnam County, 293 F.2d 1261, 1264-65 & n.13 (11th Cir. 2002). In Clark, the Eleventh Circuit

    addressed an analogous situation:

    The [Putnam County reapportionment] plan was approved by a

    majority vote of the Countys Board of Commissioners, and,pursuant to the Georgia Constitution, was presented to thelegislature for its approval. Regrettably, the legislature followed a

    course not unfamiliar to those observing state action in matters of

    this sort. In short, the legislature walked away from the issue;

    defaulted its responsibility to deal with Georgia election matters;and failed to take any action on the plan.

    Id. at 1264. After the Georgia legislature defaulted its responsibility, a federal district court

    approved the plan on an interim basis. Id. The Eleventh Circuit concluded that although there

    was a substantial dispute among the parties as to whether the plan constituted court-

    ordered redistricting, or legislatively-drawn redistricting, the plan could only be viewed as

    court-ordered. Id. at 1265 n.13. The court reasoned:

    While it is true that the county drew the plan which the district

    court ultimately ordered, it is also true that the Georgia legislature

    did not approve it, which left the plan null and void. Without courtintervention, there would be no plan to challenge. We shall

    treat this plan as a court-ordered one, since it was.

    Id.; see also id. at 1276 (applying the de minimis population deviation requirement applicable to

    court-ordered plans).

    Likewise in this case, while it is true that the respective Houses of the Legislature drew

    the plans that the House Committee now urges this Court to adopt, it is also true that the

    [Mississippi] Legislature did not approve [them], which left the plan[s] null and void. Id.

    Moreover, [w]ithout [the requested] court intervention to adopt the plans on an interim basis,

    there will be no further proceedings concerning those plans of the sort proposed by the House

    Committee. [Dkt. 82]. Therefore, as in Putnam, this Court should treat the un-enacted House

    and Senate plans as proposed court-ordered plans, since that is what they are.

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    II. THE TWO PLANS DO NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS FOR JUDICIALLY

    IMPOSED REMEDIAL PLANS.

    A. The two plans fail to satisfy the requirement of substantial population

    equality.

    Both legislative bodies and courts must satisfy the population equality requirement of the

    Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the constraints on remedial plans

    imposed by the courts are significantly tighter. As the Supreme Court of the United States ruled

    in an earlier appeal from this Courts imposition of a redistricting plan for the Mississippi

    Legislature, unless there are persuasive justifications, a court-ordered reapportionment plan of a

    state legislature must ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than

    de minimis variation. Connor v. Finch, 431 U.S. 407, 414-15 (1977) (quoting Chapman v.

    Meier, 420 U.S. 1, 26-27 (1975) (alteration omitted). The House Committee does not bother to

    suggest what important state interests can justify the substantial deviations from absolute

    equality found in both plans.

    As the Republican Party explained at page 5 of its memorandum supporting its motion

    for apportionment of expert [Dkt. 68; see also Dkt. 70 at 3], binding Fifth Circuit precedent

    precludes this Court from imposing wide deviations by judicial decree. In Wyche v. Madison

    Parish Police Jury, 635 F.2d 1151, 1159 (5th Cir. 1981), the court held that a deviation of 8.2%

    in a court-ordered plan was far more than de minimis and therefore violated one person, one

    vote. See also Chapman, 420 U.S. at 25-26 (refusing to assume that a 5.95% deviation in a

    court-ordered plan would satisfy one person, one vote);Marshall v. Edwards, 582 F.2d 927, 937-

    38 (5th Cir. 1978) (stating that a maximum population deviation of 9.7 percent would seem

    to be unacceptably high for a court-ordered plan);Colleton County Council v. McConnell, 201

    F. Supp. 2d 618, 655, 660 (D.S.C. 2002) (devising state house and senate plans with deviations

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    of plus or minus 1%). Here, both plans far exceed the population deviations previously

    permitted by the Fifth Circuit. Both House plans deviate 4.983% above and below the norm, for

    a total deviation of 9.966%. The Senate plan is only a little better. The largest district is 4.672%

    above the norm, and the smallest 4.726% below the norm, for a total deviation of 9.398%. See

    Declaration of Thomas Brooks Hofeller, Ph.D. (Hofeller Decl.), 8-9, attached as Exhibit 2.

    Neither plan reaches the 10% limit which typically invalidates a legislative plan, but neither can

    remotely meet the standards for judicial plans.

    Moreover, while a deviation in excess of the 10% standard referenced by the House

    Committee [Dkt. 82 at 2] establishes that a true legislative plan is prima facie unconstitutional, a

    deviation of slightly less than 10% doesnot provide a safe harbor. Fairley v. Hattiesburg, 584

    F.3d 660, 675 (5th Cir. 2009) (emphasis added). Accordingly, the two plans, particularly the

    House plan, would likely be unconstitutional even if they had been properly adopted under

    254. As the district court explained in Larios v. Cox, even legislative plans must justify

    substantial deviations from population equality. 300 F. Supp. 2d 1320, 1339-53 (N.D. Ga.)

    (holding that state legislative reapportionment plans with total population deviations of 9.98%

    violated the one-person, one-vote principle by systematically under-populating certain districts

    for partisan advantage), summarily affd, 542 U.S. 947 (2004). While partisan gerrymandering

    by itself does not violate the Constitution, partisan gerrymandering cannot support population

    deviations that would otherwise violate the Equal Protection Clause. In the original House plan,

    districts presently having Democratic incumbents have average populations of 1.0% below the

    norm. Districts with Republican incumbents average 1.3% above the norm. Hofeller Decl. 12.

    In addition, the House plan has redrawn or relocated certain districts presently represented by

    Republicans so that they have a black voting age population majority; excluding those districts,

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    Republican Sid Bondurant, has a compactness measure of 0.36 under the plan presently in effect.

    That measure was reduced to 0.16 under the first House plan and 0.11 under the second House

    plan. Hofeller Decl. 6. Additional, similar examples are noted in an attached declaration. See

    Hofeller Decl. 6-7. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the House Committee has pointed

    the gun and is now asking this Court to pull the trigger. While politics may not be

    unconstitutional, it is not a practice in which this Court should agree to engage.

    B. The two plans do not meet the criteria set by Miss. Code Ann. 5-3-101.

    As also explained in the memoranda supporting the Republican Partys motion for

    appointment of expert [Dkt. 68 and 70], Mississippi has established neutral redistricting criteria

    in Miss. Code Ann. 5-3-101 (Rev. 2002). They are similar to the neutral criteria that federal

    courts have traditionally applied in remedial orders, as this Court did in Smith v. Clark, 189 F.

    Supp. 2d 529, 540-41 (S.D. Miss. 2002). This Court must employ those criteria except to the

    extent necessary to comply with federal law. Both plans endorsed by the House Committee

    deviate substantially from those criteria.

    As demonstrated in the attached declaration, both plans deviate significantly from

    accepted measures of compactness. For instance, a square district would have a compactness

    measure of 0.64. Both House plans display a compactness measure of 0.33. Hofeller Decl. 5.

    While some deviation from compactness may be expected in an effort to create minority districts

    in compliance with 5 of the Voting Rights Act, certain non-minority districts, now represented

    by Republicans, are reduced to compactness measures such as 0.11 and 0.13. Id. 6. The

    district of Democratic Representative Peranich, from which her likely opponent has been

    excluded, now has a compactness measure of 0.16. Id. The Senate plan is better, with an

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    average compactness of 0.38, id. 7, but the House Committee does not even pretend that either

    plan satisfies the compactness requirement of 5-3-101.

    Nor can it be said that either plan meets the statutory requirement of crossing county

    lines, and other jurisdictional lines, as rarely as possible. Numerous counties could have been

    divided into House districts without breaking county lines and without violating any provision of

    federal law. As the attached declaration demonstrates, Warren County, Oktibbeha County, and

    Lafayette County could each have two districts, but are divided into five, six, and four,

    respectively. In the Senate plan, Pearl River County could stand alone as a single district, but,

    like Gaul, it is divided into three parts. Hofeller Decl. 10-11.

    The House Committee does not even acknowledge this Courts obligation to effectuate

    the policies set forth by statute in Mississippi, much less attempt to explain how its plan could

    meet them. The inescapable conclusion is that the two plans do not even attempt to meet the

    requirements of 5-3-101, and therefore may not be used for remedial purposes by this Court.

    III. ALTERNATIVELY, THIS COURT SHOULD ALLOW THE 2011 ELECTIONS

    TO PROCEED UNDER THE EXISTING PLANS.

    If, contrary to the suggestion set forth in the Republican Partys motion for appointment

    of expert [Dkt. 67], this Court chooses to impose an interim plan for the 2011 election, for

    such a term as this Court shall see fit to set, then it should not use the two plans suggested by the

    House Committee. Instead, the existing plans are superior in many respects.

    In the first place, the two existing plans really are legislative plans. Unlike the plan now

    endorsed by the House Committee, they really were adopted by a joint resolution of the entire

    Mississippi Legislature, as the people of Mississippi required in 254 of the Constitution. While

    that expression of Mississippi policy is now almost a decade old, it at least has the benefit of

    constitutional legitimacy.

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    Moreover, both plans were actually approved by the Attorney General of the United

    States pursuant to 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1973c. Counsel for the House

    Committee may have had good reason to assure the Court that federal approval of his clients

    plans can be obtained, but this Court can have no certainty in predicting the conduct of a party

    not presently before the Court. By contrast, this Court knows for certain that the existing plans

    have been approved as non-discriminatory.

    Third, at least with regard to the House plan, the measure of compactness is even worse

    under the new plans than under existing law. The existing plan has a compactness measure of

    0.34. Both House plans endorsed by the House Committee reduce that measure to 0.33. By

    contrast, the Senate plan remains stable at 0.38.

    Worst of all, the evidence demonstrates that the House plans contain political agendas

    that should be alien to any plan imposed by a federal court. See, e.g., Wyche, 635 F.2d at 1160

    (a court is forbidden to take into account the purely political considerations that might be

    appropriate for legislative bodies); Wyche v. Madison Parish Police Jury, 769 F.2d 265, 268

    (5th Cir. 1985) (Many factors, such as the protection of incumbents, that are appropriate in the

    legislative development of an apportionment plan have no place in a plan formulated by the

    courts.). The record does not reflect the political agendas that may have motivated the adoption

    of the existing plans a decade ago, but those quarrels are long past. Specific districts and specific

    candidates will be disadvantaged by a House plan which the House Committee invites this Court

    to adopt. This Court should decline the invitation.

    CONCLUSION

    For the reasons stated in the Republican Partys motion to appoint expert [Dkt. 67], this

    Court should adopt its own remedial plan for 2011 to elect a Legislature for a full four-year term.

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    Alternatively, this Court should employ the current plans in 2011 for such a term as this Court

    may see fit. In no event should this Court order into effect the plans endorsed by the House

    Committee in its motion.

    Respectfully submitted, this the 29th

    day of April, 2011.

    MISSISSIPPI REPUBLICAN PARTYEXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

    /s/Michael B. Wallace

    MICHAEL B. WALLACE (MB No. 6904)

    [email protected]

    C. STEVENS SEALE (MB No. 6688)[email protected]

    JAMES D. FINDLEY (MB No. 103649)

    [email protected] CARTER CHILD & CARAWAY

    Post Office Box 651Jackson MS 39201-0651

    Telephone: (601) 968-5534

    Facsimile: (601) 944-7738

    GOVERNOR HALEY BARBOUR, IN HISOFFICIAL CAPACITY AS GOVERNOR OF

    THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI AND AS A

    MEMBER OF THE STATE BOARD OFELECTION COMMISSIONERS

    s/Jack L. Wilson

    STEPHEN L. THOMAS (MB No. 8309)

    [email protected]

    JACK L. WILSON (MB No. 101482)[email protected]

    BRADLEY ARANT BOULT CUMMINGS LLP

    188 East Capitol StreetJackson, MS 39201

    Post Office Box 1789Jackson, MS 39215-1789

    Telephone: (601) 948-8000

    Facsimile: (601) 948-3000

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    CERTIFICATEOFSERVICE

    I hereby certify that I electronically filed the foregoing with the Clerk of the Court using

    the ECF system which sent such notification of such filing to the following:

    Carroll Rhodes, Esq.Law Offices of Carroll RhodesPost Office Box 588

    Hazlehurst, MS 39083-0588

    Robert L. Gibbs, Esq.Matthew W. Allen, Esq.

    Brunini Grantham Grower & Hewes

    Post Office Drawer 119Jackson, MS 39205-0119

    Samuel L. Begley, Esq.Begley Law Firm

    Post Office Box 287

    Jackson, MS 39205-0287

    Harold E. Pizzetta, III, Esq.

    Justin L. Matheny, Esq.

    Office of the Attorney GeneralPost Office Box 220

    Jackson, MS 39205

    Robert Bruce McDuff, Esq.

    Robert McDuff Law Office767 N. Congress Street

    Jackson, MS 39202-3009

    Crystal W. Martin, Esq.

    Precious Martin Sr. & Associates

    Post Office Box 373

    Jackson, MS 39205-0373

    R. Andrew Taggart, Jr., Esq.

    Clay B. Baldwin, Esq.Taggart, Rimes & Usry, PLLC

    1022 Highland Colony Pkwy, Ste. 101

    Ridgeland, MS 39157

    Case 3:11-cv-00159-TSL -EGJ -LG Document 92 Filed 04/29/11 Page 16 of 17

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    John F. Hawkins, Esq.Hawkins Stracener & Gibson, PLLC

    Post Office Box 24627

    Jackson, MS 39225-4627

    Cory T. Wilson, Esq.Willoughby Law Group, PLLC602 Steed Road

    Suite 110

    Ridgeland, MS 39157

    This, the 29th day of April, 2011.

    s/Jack L. WilsonSTEPHEN L. THOMAS (MB No. 8309)

    [email protected]

    JACK L. WILSON (MB No. 101482)[email protected]

    BRADLEY ARANT BOULT CUMMINGS LLP

    188 East Capitol Street

    Jackson, MS 39201Post Office Box 1789

    Jackson, MS 39215-1789

    Telephone: (601) 948-8000Facsimile: (601) 948-3000

    Case 3:11-cv-00159-TSL -EGJ -LG Document 92 Filed 04/29/11 Page 17 of 17