Redistricting in California is the process of redrawing the California State Senate, California Assembly, and federal congressional maps. It is usually done after each decennial census and subsequent reapportionment by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. California is one of eight states with an independent commission. It was created by voters in 2008 when they passed a proposition to take redistricting power away from the Legislature for state Assembly and Senate districts. In 2010, voters added congressional redistricting to the commission's duties. The commission's makeup is 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 4 unaffiliated citizens, chosen from business people, professors, or community leaders.
History When former Governor Earl Warren mandated one man, one vote by deciding Reynolds v. Sims, the California Senate was badly malapportioned by counties, with the 6 million people in Los Angeles County and the 397 people in Alpine County each represented by one state senator. In 1966 Governor Pat Brown signed a bipartisan gerrymander the state senators had designed to retain as many incumbents as constitutionally possible.Grainger, Corbett A. Redistricting and Polarization: Who Draws the Lines in California?, 53 Journal of Law and Economics 545 (2010). The legislature attempted further incumbency protection after the 1970 census, so Governor Ronald Reagan vetoed the bill.Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Communities and the California Commission, 23 Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev. 282 (2012). With the legislature and governor unable to resolve the impasse, the California Supreme Court ultimately appointed special masters to draw new districts.Id. discussing Legislature v. Reinecke, 10 Cal. 3d 396 (1973).
1980 census After the 1980 census California became entitled to 45 congressional districts, a growth of two.Michael A. Hess, Beyond Justiciability: Political Gerrymandering after Davis v. Bandemer, 9 Campbell L. Rev. 207 (1987). Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and the governorship but were feeling vulnerable after former Governor Reagan had won California by a landslide in the 1980 presidential election. Democratic Congressman Phillip Burton and new State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown devised a redistricting plan that would result in five new safe Democratic seats.Bruce E. Cain, ‘’Redistricting Commissions: A Better Political Buffer’’, 121 Yale L. J., 1808 (2012). Congressman Burton would boast that the bizarrely shaped map, which included a 385-sided district, was "My contribution to modern art".Easha Anand, Finding a Path Through the Political Thicket: In Defense of Partisan Gerrymandering’s Justiciability, 102 Cal. L. Rev. 917 (2014) citing Robert Reinhold, Surgery on G.O.P. Was Deft, Not Painless, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 3, 1991. Reacting to what was called "one of the most notorious gerrymanders" of the decade,Richard Pildes, The Supreme Court, 2003 Term – Foreword: The Constitutionalization of Democratic Politics, 118 Harv. L. Rev. 29 (2003). Republicans successfully placed a veto referendum on the primary ballot and California voters overwhelmingly rejected the legislature's redistricting plans in the June 1982 election, the same election that enacted the California Constitution's Victim's Bill of Rights.
A majority of the California Supreme Court justices, however, had been appointed by Governor Jerry Brown and a sharply fractured court ordered the rejected districts to be used in the November election, only because it was "practicable".Assembly v. Deukmejian, 639 P.2d 939, 30 Cal. 3d 638, 180 Cal. Rptr. 297 (1982). Democrats won 60% of the congressional seats despite only taking 49.9% of the statewide vote.Pamela Karlan, Why Voting is Different, 84 Cal. L. Rev. 1201 (1996). Democrats still lost the statewide elections, losing the governorship and incumbent Governor Jerry Brown losing his U.S. Senate bid to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson. Governor Brown responded by calling an extraordinary legislative session, amending a previously passed bill with the redistricting plan that had just been rejected by the electorate, and signing the redistricting plan into law hours before being replaced by Republican George Deukmejian.’’Badham v. Eu’’, 694 F. Supp. 664 (N.D. Cal. 1988), summarily aft’d 488 U.S. 1024 (1989) (Three justices, dissenting).
1990 census Governor Pete Wilson vetoed the redistricting plan developed by the Democratic legislature after the 1990 census, alleging that it was a partisan gerrymander and would violate the federal Voting Rights Act.California Court Agrees to Oversee Redistricting, N.Y. TIMES, September 26, 1991. Only one of Jerry Brown's chosen Supreme Court justices remained after incensed California voters had removed many of his appointments in recall elections. Governor Wilson asked and the California Supreme Court agreed to appoint special masters to perform the redistricting.Wilson v. Eu, 823 P.2d 545, 547-48 (Cal. 1992).
2000 census After the 2000 year census, the legislature was obliged to set new district boundaries, both for the state Assembly and Senate and for federal congressional districts (CDs). The Republican and Democratic parties came to an agreement to gerrymander the boundaries. It was mutually decided that the status quo in terms of balance of power would be preserved. With this goal, districts were assigned to voters in such a way that they were dominated by one or the other party, with few districts that could be considered competitive.
In only a few cases did this require extremely convoluted boundaries, but resulted in preservation of existing strongholds: in the results of the 2004 election , a win by less than 55 percent of the vote was quite rare—only five of eighty Assembly districts, and two of 39 Senate district seats, and no seat was changed in the party of its winner, and neither was any U.S. congressional seat.
2010 census Following the passage of Proposition 11 in 2008, the Independent Redistricting Commission's selection process went underway. After the fourteen members of the commission were chosen, the committee held numerous meetings from February 2011 to January 2012, taking input from citizens representing communities across the state, determining which communities to place in districts. The commission held 34 public input hearings and heard from 2700 speakers, received 245 public appearances by commissioners and over 40,000 public comments and submissions. Mapping lasted throughout the summer of 2011, with drafts released on June 6, 2011. Final maps were released on July 28, 2011, and the commission certified them on August 15 of the same year, putting the maps into effect.
The map had 33 Democratic leaning seats, 14 Republican leaning seats and 6 competitive seats. Democrats ended up flipping four seats in the 2012 United States House of Representatives elections in California.
2020 census After the United States Census Bureau finalized its data and released its reapportionment numbers for the United States House of Representatives, California and six other states were slated to each lose a seat. This was the first time in state history that California lost a seat, as a result of increasingly stagnant population growth.
The Commission did its work under a changed legal landscape. At the Legislature's request to be consistent with new state laws, the Commission reallocated individuals in state prisons to their last known addresses. Also, in prior redistricting cycles, the federal Voting Rights Act required California to seek federal preclearance for redistricting plans affecting several counties, but in 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark decision rendering a key part of the law unconstitutional. (Shelby County v. Holder) This meant that federal preclearance—which had previously applied to Kings, Merced, Monterey, and Yuba counties—was no longer required.
The Commission held 196 public meetings, including public meetings to solicit information on communities of interest, public meetings to receive feedback on visualizations, and live line-drawing sessions. It also received more than 3,870 verbal comments, input, and suggestions during Commission meetings. The commission also received over 32,410 written comments, input, and suggestions from individuals and groups. Public education and outreach began in October 2020, ending in July 2021 when the commission began mapping. The commission then received datasets, input from locals, and census data in the summer of 2021 and finished its map in December of that year.
The final map resulted in 36 Democratic leaning districts, 11 competitive districts, and 5 Republican districts. Joe Biden won all but seven of California's district in his landslide victory in California, while Gavin Newsom lost fourteen of the same congressional districts in his bid for reelection as California's Governor. House Democrats lost two seats, one of which (the Lake Tahoe-based 3rd) was vacated by incumbent Democrat John Garamendi opting to run in a safer Bay Area district. The other seat lost by Democrats, the 13th, was anchored in Merced and surrounding communities in the Central Valley. Its incumbent, Josh Harder, ran in the Stockton-based 9th district. Republican John Duarte ran for the open seat, clinching the seat by 564 votes against Adam Gray.
In 2024, Gray would enter a rematch against Duarte and end up flipping the 13th by a little over 200 votes. In the 41st, an Asian opportunity seat, incumbent Michelle Steel was unseated by Derek Tran in an upset. Rep. Mike Garcia, was also ousted in the 27th district, a Hispanic-majority seat in northern Los Angeles County. Kamala Harris lost 11 of California's congressional districts in her unsuccessful bid for president.
Reform attempts Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed placing the redistricting process in the hands of retired judges, which was on the November ballot as an initiative in a special election (called by the Governor on June 14, 2005), Proposition 77. The special election was held on November 8, 2005. However, the initiative was defeated, with 59.5% No votes. All initiatives, including those proposed by the Governor's allies and several independent initiatives, failed.
The United States House of Representatives districts were less competitive than the state districts with only three out of 53 congressional districts being won with less than 60 percent majority.
Considering the 10th CD in the San Francisco Bay Area, in earlier elections the almost evenly divided district was a focus of national attention, owing to its balanced electorate with a slight Republican edge in registration and a Republican advantage in electoral participation. The district had been held since its creation in 1990 by a Republican, Congressman Bill Baker, a former State Assembly member, for whom the district was designed. After several weak challenges to the seat by Democrats, the election was hotly contested in 1996 by a newcomer to politics, Ellen Tauscher, a candidate with sufficient funds of her own to be competitive against the incumbent. Receiving a great amount of grassroots support from local Democratic clubs and votes from moderate Republican women, her defeat of Congressman Baker was considered a great victory for what many consider a "middle of the road" Democrat. Her redrawn district is now "safe" (she won reelection with 75.6 percent of the vote in 2002) and subsequent full-term congressional elections drew no national attention to California.
As desired by the two major parties, in the 2004 elections there was no change of political party in any of the district-elected offices at either the State or Federal level - no member of the State Assembly, State Senator, or U. S. Representative was not of the same party as their predecessor.