Summary
In Forty-Fourth General Assembly v. Lucas, 379 U.S. 693, 85 S.Ct. 715, 13 L.Ed.2d 699 (1965), the United States Supreme Court required a three-judge court in a legislative reapportionment case (232 F. Supp. 797 (D.Colo. 1964)) to refrain from deciding issues of purely state law where a state court indicates its intention expeditiously to resolve such issues.
Summary of this case from Grivetti v. Illinois State Electoral BoardOpinion
No. 661.
Decided February 1, 1965.
Judgment with respect to federal questions affirmed; judgment with respect to other questions vacated and cause remanded.
Reported below: 232 F. Supp. 797.
Duke W. Dunbar, Attorney General of Colorado, Charles S. Vigil, Richard S. Kitchen, Sr., Stephen H. Hart and James Lawrence White for appellants.
Charles Ginsberg and George Louis Creamer for appellees.
Insofar as the judgment of the District Court decides federal questions, it is affirmed. Insofar as the judgment decides other questions, it is vacated and the cause is remanded for further consideration in light of the supervening decision of the Colorado Supreme Court in White v. Anderson, 155 Colo. 291, 394 P.2d 333 (1964).
It is our understanding that the Court's disposition of this case leaves it open to the District Court to abstain on the question as to the severability of the various provisions of Amendment No. 7, pending resolution of that issue with reasonable promptitude in further state court proceedings. We deem it appropriate explicitly to state our view that this is the course which the District Court should follow. On this basis, we join the Court's opinion.