Nos. 01-3478/3496/3505 PATRICK C. ENGLISH v. the Board of Education of the Town of Boonton

PRECEDENTIAL
Filed August 2, 2002
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
Nos. 01-3478/3496/3505
PATRICK C. ENGLISH
v.
THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE TOWN OF
BOONTON; *WILLIAM L. LIBRERA, Commissioner of the
New Jersey Department of Education
Board of Education of Town of Boonton,
Appellant in Nos. 01-3478/01-3505
**THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF LINCOLN PARK,
Intervenor
(*Pursuant to F.R.A.P. 43(c))
(**Pursuant to the Court’s Order dated 9/24/01)
PATRICK C. ENGLISH
v.
THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE TOWN OF
BOONTON; *WILLIAM L. LIBRERA, Commissioner of the
New Jersey Department of Education
William L. Librera,
Appellant in No. 01-3496
**THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF LINCOLN PARK,
Intervenor
(*Pursuant to F.R.A.P. 43(c))
(**Pursuant to the Court’s Order dated 9/24/01)
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Jersey
(D.C. Civ. No. 00-cv-05394)
District Judge: Honorable Faith S. Hochberg
Argued: April 25, 2002
Before: BECKER, Chief Judge, SCIRICA and
RENDELL, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: August 2, 2002)

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Patrick C. English, Esquire (Argued)
Dines & English
685 Van Houten Avenue
Clifton, NJ 07013
Appellee
Kevin Kovacs, Esquire (Argued)
Purcell, Ries, Shannon, Mulcahy
& O’Neill
Crossroads Business Center
One Pluckemin Way, Suite 210
P.O. Box 754
Bedminster, NJ 07921
Counsel for Intervenor
Jeffrey Speiser, Esquire
Herbert J. Stern, Esquire (Argued)
Stern, Greenberg & Kilcullen
75 Livingston Avenue
Roseland, NJ 07068
Counsel for Appellant in
Nos. 01-3478/01-3505
2
John J. Farmer, Jr.
Attorney General of New Jersey
Nancy Kaplan
Assistant Attorney General
Of Counsel
Howard J. McCoach (Argued)
Deputy Attorney General
Sarah G. Crowley
Deputy Attorney General
On the Brief
Office of Attorney General of
New Jersey
Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex
P.O. Box 112
Trenton, NJ 08625
Counsel for Appellant in
No. 01-3496
OPINION OF THE COURT
BECKER, Chief Judge.
Lincoln Park is a New Jersey municipality that has
elected to fulfill its statutory obligation to educate its high
school students by entering into what is known as a"send-
receive" relationship with neighboring Boonton through
which it sends its pupils to Boonton High School and pays
to the Boonton School District a tuition that reflects the
"actual cost" of the students enrolled. N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-19.
Under New Jersey’s statute regulating send-receive

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relationships, N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.2, Lincoln Park is entitled
to only one representative on the ten-member Boonton
Board of Education ("Board"). Because Lincoln Park
students constitute 52% of the Boonton High School
population and Lincoln Park’s population as a whole
amounts to 56% of the combined populations of the two
towns, the plaintiff, Patrick English, a resident of Lincoln
Park, maintains that relegating Lincoln Park to only one
vote on the Boonton Board deprives him of his
constitutional right, under the Equal Protection Clause of
3
the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Const. amend. XIV,S 1,
to proportional representation.
Upon cross-motions for summary judgment, the District
Court agreed with English, and entered an order granting
summary judgment against defendants the Boonton Board
and the State Commissioner of Education. See English v.
Bd. of Educ. of Town of Boonton, 135 F. Supp. 2d 588
(D.N.J. 2001) [hereinafter "English I"]. The Court ordered
Lincoln Park’s representation increased to four (out of
thirteen), with the Lincoln Park delegation’s vote on matters
affecting the high school weighted by a factor that would
give Lincoln Park influence on the Board congruent with its
share of the high school population. See English v. Bd. of
Educ. of Town of Boonton, 161 F. Supp. 2d 344, 347-48
(D.N.J. 2001) [hereinafter "English II"].
In reviewing the District Court’s decision, we are called
upon to consider the extent of the constitutional principle
of "one person, one vote." Under this doctrine, "each
qualified voter must be given an equal opportunity to
participate in [an] election, and when members of an
elected body are chosen from separate districts, each
district must be established on a basis that will ensure, as
far as is practicable, that equal numbers of voters can vote
for proportionally equal numbers of officials." Hadley v.
Junior Coll. Dist. of Metro. Kansas City, Mo., 397 U.S. 50,
56 (1970).
Although requiring equality among eligible voters,"one
person, one vote" jurisprudence recognizes that certain
restrictions on voter eligibility are valid. In Holt Civic Club
v. City of Tuscaloosa, 439 U.S. 60 (1978), the Supreme
Court held "that a government unit may legitimately restrict
the right to participate in its political processes to those
who reside within its borders." Id. at 68-69. Such
geography-based restrictions on the franchise have been
upheld as valid when a municipality exercises
"extraterritorial" powers over individuals outside its
boundaries; the exercise of "extraterritorial" powers does
not, according to Holt, require a "concomitant
extraterritorial extension of the franchise." Id. at 69.
Because valid geography-based restrictions on voting do not
offend the principle of "one person, one vote," a court need
4

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not subject them to strict scrutiny; rather, the restrictions
must only "bear some rational relationship to a legitimate
state purpose." Id. at 70.
In our view, Holt mandates the conclusion that strict
scrutiny does not apply and that Lincoln Park residents can
claim no constitutional right to proportional representation
on the Boonton Board. As is obvious, the residents of
Lincoln Park do not reside within the geographic district
that is responsible for electing the members of the Boonton
Board; the Boonton Board, therefore, merely exercises
extraterritorial power over Lincoln Park. Because Lincoln
Park maintains its own separate board of education that
controls the K-8 education of its students, this is not a case
in which the Boonton School District "exercis[es] precisely
the same governmental powers over residents of
surrounding . . . territory as it does over those residing
within its corporate limits." Id. at 72 n.8. Rather, the
Boonton Board is in a position to govern only four of
thirteen years of a Lincoln Park student’s public education,
and thereby exercises limited extraterritorial powers.
Furthermore, under New Jersey’s send-receive legislative
scheme, it is possible that Lincoln Park may one day sever
its send-receive relationship with Boonton. As a result, the
residents of Lincoln Park cannot be said to possess the
same stake as Boonton residents in Board decisions that
affect the Boonton School District in the long term, such as
capital improvements. At bottom, we conclude that the New
Jersey send-receive scheme as applied to Lincoln Park does
not violate the principle of "one person, one vote."
English maintains, however, that even if we decline to
review the Lincoln Park-Boonton arrangement under strict
scrutiny, the statutory scheme’s allocation of only one vote
to Lincoln Park does not survive even the more deferential
rational basis review. We disagree, for we think that the
allocation to Lincoln Park of only one representative on the
Boonton Board, the type of complex judgment that a state
legislature is entitled to make, does, in fact,"bear some
rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose." Id. at
70. Accordingly, we will reverse the order of the District
Court and remand with directions to grant summary
judgment to the defendants.
5
I. Facts and Procedural History
Under New Jersey law, Lincoln Park has an obligation to
educate, at its own expense, all persons, between the ages
of five and twenty who are domiciled within the district.
N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-1. New Jersey law, however, does not
require that Lincoln Park construct and maintain its own
schools in order to fulfill this obligation. Rather, Lincoln
Park, like any New Jersey school district, may enter into a
send-receive relationship with another district whereby it

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sends its pupils to the receiving district’s schools for one
grade or more, N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8, in return for a tuition
payment that does not exceed the "actual cost" of the
students enrolled, N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-19, with"actual cost"
defined in detail by the New Jersey Administrative Code.
See N.J. Admin. Code S 6A:23-3.1.
Over fifty years ago, rather than build its own high
school, Lincoln Park elected to enter into a send-receive
relationship with neighboring Boonton for the education of
its high school students, and that relationship has
continued to the present day. Although the Lincoln Park-
Boonton relationship has persisted for more than half a
century, it has not been without its share of acrimony, as
there have been at least four major lawsuits between the
districts on topics ranging from the Lincoln Park
representative’s right to receive information to overcharging
of tuition to Lincoln Park. See English I, 135 F. Supp. 2d at
591.
According to New Jersey law, when a sending district’s
students "comprise less than 10 percent of the total
enrollment of the pupils in the grades of the receiving
district in which the pupils of the sending district will be
enrolled, the sending district shall have no representation
on the receiving board of education." N.J.S.A.S 18A:38-
8.2(a)(1). When, however, the sending district’s pupils
"comprise at least 10 percent of the total enrollment of the
pupils in the grades of the receiving district in which the
pupils of the sending district will be enrolled," the sending
district’s board of education is entitled to appoint one
member to serve on the receiving district’s board. N.J.S.A.
S 18A:38-8.2(a)(2). The level of representation of the sending
district remains fixed at one representative regardless of
6
whether students from the sending district constitute 10 %
or 90 % of the relevant population of the receiving district’s
schools. As a result of a political compromise, the state
legislature has carved out one exception to this rule, which
is explained in the margin.1
As noted above, for the 2001-02 school year, Lincoln
Park provided 52 % of the high school’s combined student
population. Additionally, according to the most recent
census data, Lincoln Park’s total population amounts to
56 % of the combined population of the two towns but,
despite its larger population, Lincoln Park, as per N.J.S.A.
S 18A:32-8.2, is entitled to only one representative on the
Boonton Board. Moreover, state law limits the vote of the
Lincoln Park representative on the Boonton Board to the
following issues:
a. Tuition to be charged the sending district by the
receiving district and the bill lists or contracts for
the purchase, operation or maintenance of
facilities, equipment and instructional materials to
be used in the education of the pupils of the

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sending district;
b. New capital construction to be utilized by sending
district pupils;
_________________________________________________________________
1. New Jersey law provides that sending districts in "sixth class" counties
-- counties bordering the Atlantic Ocean that have a population of less
than 125,000, see N.J.S.A. S 40A:6-1-- which have "resident enrollment
greater than 2,400 pupils but less than 2,600 pupils and which send[ ]
its pupils in grades 9 through 12 to a school district in the same county
pursuant to N.J.S.18A:38-8 [the send-receive provision]," are entitled to
up to three representatives on the receiving district’s board if students
from the sending district make up at least 40 % of the total enrollment
of grades 9 through 12. N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.4. As the anomalous nature
of this provision suggests, this exception was adopted to benefit one
particular sending school district, Upper Township. The legislative
history indicates that the provision was passed in order to effectuate an
agreement between Upper Township and the receiving district, Ocean
City, by which the two agreed to increase Upper Township’s
representation on Ocean City’s school board from one to three
representatives. See S. Doc. No. 2212, 208th Sess., at 3 (N.J. 1999); A.
Doc. No. 3499, 208th Sess., at 3 (N.J. 1999).
7
c. Appointment, transfer or removal of teaching staff
members providing services to pupils of the sending
district, including any teaching staff member who
is a member of the receiving district’s central
administrative staff; and
d. Addition or deletion of curricular and
extracurricular programs involving pupils of the
sending district.
N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.1.
State law mandates that neither the sending nor the
receiving district may sever its send-receive relationship
without the approval of the State’s Commissioner of
Education ("Commissioner"). N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-13. To
obtain approval, the district seeking to withdraw from the
relationship must submit a feasibility study addressing the
educational and financial implications of severance and the
effect on the racial composition of the student population of
each of the districts. Id. If the Commissioner concludes that
"no substantial negative impact" will result from the
severance, he or she "shall grant" the severance. Id. Despite
the grievances of some of its residents, Lincoln Park has
apparently never officially sought to withdraw from its
send-receive relationship with Boonton.2
_________________________________________________________________
2. Although this case concerns a send-receive relationship, it is worth
noting that there is another option by which two municipalities can pool
educational resources under New Jersey law: the formation of a
"regional" school district. See 18A:13-1 et seq. A "regional" school district
can be either "all purpose," which means that it is responsible for

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educating students of all ages within the district, or "limited purpose,"
which means that it is responsible for educating students of certain
grade levels only. See N.J.S.A. S 18A:13-2. Limited purpose regional
districts are often formed to provide high school facilities for the children
of two or more towns that do not have high schools of their own. In such
instances, residents of the towns making up the regional district will vote
for two school boards -- one for their municipality’s own K-8 district,
and another for the regional school district, which would govern only
high school affairs.
Funding for regional school districts is apportioned on the basis of
relative municipal property values, pupil enrollments from each
municipality, or a combination thereof. See N.J.S.A. S 18A:13-23. As for
8
Plaintiff Patrick English, a resident of Lincoln Park,
brought suit in the District Court for the District of New
Jersey against the Boonton Board and the Commissioner of
the New Jersey Department of Education. Although not an
original plaintiff, the Lincoln Park School Board was
permitted by the District Court to intervene in the litigation
on English’s behalf.3 The plaintiffs alleged that N.J.S.A.
S 18A:32-8.2’s allocation of one representative to a sending
district on the receiving district’s board was
unconstitutional as applied because it deprived English and
other residents of Lincoln Park of their right to proportional
representation. Upon cross-motions for summary judgment,
the District Court granted summary judgment for the
plaintiffs, concluding that the constitutional principle of
"one person, one vote" had been violated by N.J.S.A.
S 18A:32-8.2 as applied to Lincoln Park. English I, 135 F.
Supp. 2d at 594. The Court explicitly noted that it was not
striking down the statute as unconstitutional on its face,
for it noted that in some instances the statute’s allocation
of one vote to a sending district might result in
representation that comports with the "one person, one
vote" principle. Id. at n.9.
_________________________________________________________________
governance, New Jersey law requires that a regional school board consist
of nine members, and that each town within the regional district have at
least one representative on the board. See N.J.S.A. S 18A:13-8. If there
are less than nine towns in the district, the extra seats on the board are
distributed on the basis of population. See id. Like the send-receive
representation scheme at issue in the case at bar, the regional district
representation scheme has also been attacked as a violation of the "one
person, one vote" doctrine in instances where a constituent municipality
receives less representation on the regional school board than it would
receive if representation were apportioned on the basis of population
alone. See, e.g., Township of Marlboro v. Bd. of Educ. of Freehold Reg’l
High Sch., 992 F. Supp. 756 (D.N.J. 1998) (finding "one person, one vote"
violation where town that made up 20 % of the regional district’s
combined population received only one vote on nine-person regional
school board).
3. For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to the individual plaintiff --
English -- and the intervening Lincoln Park School Board collectively as
"the plaintiffs," even though the latter is not, strictly speaking, a

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"plaintiff " in this litigation.
9
As an interim remedy for the constitutional violation (the
Court made clear its belief that it was for the state
legislature to fashion a long-term solution), the Court
ordered that Lincoln Park’s representation on the Boonton
Board be increased from one representative (out of ten) to
four (out of thirteen). English II, 161 F. Supp. 2d at 347.
Moreover, for the matters enumerated in S 18A:38-8.1 that
relate only to high school affairs (i.e., not matters that
concern the school district as a whole such as the selection
of members of the district’s central administrative staff), the
Court ordered that the vote of the Lincoln Park delegation
be weighted by a factor of 2.5, which would have the effect
of giving the Lincoln Park representatives control over
52.6 % of the vote, a number which the District Court
thought would "achieve, as nearly as practicable,
representation proportionate to Lincoln Park and Boonton’s
respective proportion of the combined population of the two
districts." Id. at 347-48. With respect to the matters
enumerated in S 18A:38-8.1 that do have a district-wide
impact, the Court ordered that the Lincoln Park
representatives’ votes be weighted by a factor of 0.7, which
would bring the Lincoln Park representation to
"approximately 23%," a figure that represents the
proportion of total students in the Boonton School District
who are from Lincoln Park. Id. at 348. The defendants have
appealed both the District Court’s declaration of N.J.S.A.
S 18A:38-8.2 as unconstitutional as well as the Court’s
remedy.
This Court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.SS 1291.4
_________________________________________________________________
4. The Boonton Board has argued that we have no jurisdiction over this
case because the plaintiff ’s claims are not yet ripe. Because the Lincoln
Park School Board has never officially sought to withdraw from its
relationship with Boonton, the Boonton Board maintains that Lincoln
Park must first exhaust its administrative remedies-- seeking severance
through the Commissioner’s office as per N.J.S.A.S 18A:38-13 -- before
this suit can proceed. We disagree. This lawsuit has not been brought by
the Lincoln Park School Board (although the Board has intervened on
behalf of the plaintiff), but rather by a resident of Lincoln Park suing in
his individual capacity. As an individual, English has no power to seek
severance of the Lincoln Park-Boonton relationship. Moreover, while
English’s suit certainly has consequences for all of Lincoln Park’s
10
Our review of a district court’s grant of summary judgment
is plenary. See Beers-Capitol v. Whetzel, 256 F.3d 120, 130
n.6 (3d Cir. 2001). Summary judgment is proper if there is
no genuine issue of material fact and if, viewing the facts in
the light most favorable to the non-moving party, the
moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See
F.R.C.P. 56(c); Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317 (1986).

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II. Discussion
A. The Constitutional Principle of
"One Person, One Vote"
The history of the Fourteenth Amendment’s "one person,
one vote" doctrine begins with Baker v. Carr , 369 U.S. 186
(1962), where the Supreme Court rejected the long-held
notion that questions of legislative apportionment were
political questions outside the purview of the judiciary.
Baker paved the way for a series of successful"one person,
one vote" challenges to state and local elective systems,
including the elections of state legislators, Reynolds v.
Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), county officials, Avery v.
Midland County, 390 U.S. 474 (1968), members of a local
school board, Kramer v. Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 15, 395
U.S. 621 (1969), and trustees of a community college,
_________________________________________________________________
residents, the suit is, at its core, a claim to vindicate not the collective
rights of Lincoln Park residents, but the individual’s right under the
Equal Protection Clause to "one person, one vote." See Shelley v.
Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 22 (1948) ("The rights created by the first section
of the Fourteenth Amendment are, by its terms, guaranteed to the
individual. The rights established are personal rights.") (emphases
added). In other words, even if the Lincoln Park School Board were
entirely content with the terms of its send-receive relationship with
Boonton (which, apparently, it is not, as evidenced by its intervention on
English’s behalf), English would still be entitled to bring suit to vindicate
his individual rights as a voter. See, e.g., Baker v. Reg’l High Sch. Dist.
No. 5, 520 F.2d 799 (2d Cir. 1975) (court heard suit of individual
resident alleging violation of "one person, one vote" principle despite fact
that the district in which the plaintiff resided had consented to the joint
board of education’s representation scheme).
11
Hadley v. Junior Coll. Dist. of Metro. Kansas City, Mo., 397
U.S. 50 (1970).
The "one person, one vote" principle requires that "each
qualified voter must be given an equal opportunity to
participate in th[e] election, and when members of an
elected body are chosen from separate districts, each
district must be established on a basis that will ensure, as
far as is practicable, that equal numbers of voters can vote
for proportionally equal numbers of officials." Id. at 56.
When a challenged elective system denies an equal voice to
each resident, the scheme is reviewed under strict scrutiny,
for "the general presumption of constitutionality afforded
state statutes and the traditional approval given state
classifications if the Court can conceive of a ‘rational basis’
for the distinctions made are not applicable." Kramer, 395
U.S. at 627-28.5
While proclaiming the importance of the "one person, one
vote" right, the Supreme Court has also recognized that this
right must operate within certain geographic boundaries.

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Obviously, it does not violate the principle of"one person,
one vote" when residents of Idaho are denied the right to
vote for the governor of New Jersey. Nor does it violate "one
person, one vote" when the residents of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania’s suburbs are denied the right to vote for the
Mayor or City Council of Philadelphia, despite the fact that
many decisions of the Philadelphia city government-- such
_________________________________________________________________
5. An exception to this rule has been recognized in the case of the
election of "certain functionaries whose duties are so far removed from
normal governmental activities and so disproportionately affect different
groups that a popular election . . . might not be required." Hadley, 397
U.S. at 56. In such "special interest elections," "the State may
constitutionally disenfranchise residents who lack the required special
interest in the subject matter of the election." Holt, 439 U.S. at 69. For
instance, the Supreme Court upheld a scheme that apportioned votes for
the members of a water storage district board not on a "one person, one
vote" basis, but rather on the basis of the value of property owned. See
Salyer Land Co. v. Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage Dist., 410 U.S. 719
(1973). The Court has also expressly left open the question of whether
school board elections can be limited to a subset of a school district’s
general population that is "primarily interested in school affairs."
Kramer, 395 U.S. at 632.
12
as those regarding taxes, transportation, parking, and
cultural institutions -- "inescapably affect individuals living
immediately outside [Philadelphia’s] borders," particularly
those who work within the city limits. Holt Civic Club v. City
of Tuscaloosa, 439 U.S. 60, 69 (1978). The Supreme Court
has recognized, therefore, "that a government unit may
legitimately restrict the right to participate in its political
processes to those who reside within its borders," despite
the fact that a government unit’s decisions may inevitably
have an effect -- sometimes a very large effect-- on
persons who reside outside the unit’s geographic limits. Id.
at 68-69.
B. Holt and the Validity of Geographical
Restrictions on the Franchise
In Holt, the Supreme Court expressly recognized
geographical limits on the "one person, one vote" principle.
There the Court addressed the constitutionality of an
Alabama statute that subjected Holt, an unincorporated
community on the outskirts of the city of Tuscaloosa, to the
city’s "police jurisdiction," which meant that Holt was
subject to Tuscaloosa’s police and sanitary regulations and
the criminal jurisdiction of Tuscaloosa’s courts, as well as
the city’s power to license businesses, trades, and
professions. Despite Tuscaloosa’s exercise of "police
jurisdiction" over Holt, the statute did not entitle Holt
residents to vote in Tuscaloosa elections, an exclusion
which was challenged as a violation of "one person, one
vote."
In concluding that the scheme was constitutional, the

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Court distinguished prior cases in which a violation of the
"one person, one vote" principle had been found as those
where the franchise had been denied "to individuals who
were physically resident within the geographic boundaries
of the governmental entity concerned." Id. at 68. The court
held that, because Holt residents lived outside the
boundaries of Tuscaloosa, the governmental unit at issue,
"one person, one vote" was not implicated and the scheme
needed to survive only rational basis review to be upheld.
Applying rational basis review, the Court concluded that
the scheme bore "some rational relationship to a legitimate
13
state purpose," id. at 70, and upheld Tuscaloosa’s
extraterritorial exercise of municipal powers over Holt. Id.
at 74-75.
The defendants contend that this case is controlled by
Holt because English and the other residents of Lincoln
Park, like the residents of Holt, reside outside"the
geographic borders of the governmental entity concerned"
-- the Boonton School District. Id. at 68. Consequently, the
defendants submit, although Lincoln Park residents, like
the residents of Holt, are subject to the extraterritorial
jurisdiction of another municipal entity -- specifically, the
Boonton Board’s control over their children’s high school
education -- they are not entitled to a proportionate vote in
that entity’s elections. Thus, the defendants argue, the
principle of "one person, one vote" is not offended, and the
state need not justify its representation scheme under strict
scrutiny. See Mixon v. Ohio, 193 F.3d 389, 402 (6th Cir.
1999) (noting that when legislation "does not infringe on the
right to vote, we examine the challenged statute under the
rational basis standard").
The plaintiffs counter that the Supreme Court’s holding
in Holt is limited to instances in which a municipality
exercises only "limited" extraterritorial power over non-
residents. They submit that where a municipality exercises
extensive powers over non-residents, as they contend is the
case here, political subdivisions are mere formalities that
ought not to stand in the way of the vindication of federal
constitutional rights, and, accordingly, the franchise must
be extended extraterritorially to non-residents whose
interests are affected by the decisions of another
governmental entity.
The plaintiffs rely on a 1975 decision of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Little Thunder v.
South Dakota, 518 F.2d 1253 (8th Cir. 1975). There the
Court was called upon to review the constitutionality of a
South Dakota statutory scheme under which residents of
the state’s "unorganized" counties were excluded from
participating in the elections of "organized" county officials
who nevertheless wielded the same powers over the
"unorganized" counties as they did over the"organized"
counties that elected them. Id. at 1254-55. Although South

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14
Dakota argued that the non-residents’ exclusion was
justified as a legitimate geographic residency requirement,
the Court of Appeals rejected this view as "too simplistic."
Id. While the Court recognized a state’s prerogative to
impose geographic limits on the franchise, it cautioned that
"those limits must bear a close relationship to the
underlying interests of the parties affected in the results of
the elective process." Id. at 1256. Because the
"unorganized"/"organized" county residence distinction in
voting rights did not "result from a substantial difference in
the[ ] interests [of the residents of each type of county] in
the election of county officials," the Court held that the
scheme was an unconstitutional violation of the"one
person, one vote" principle. Id.
We agree with the plaintiffs and the Eighth Circuit that
a rigidly formalistic approach to geography in "one person,
one vote" jurisprudence would be "too simplistic," as it may
result in upholding "entirely arbitrary" or"irrational[ ]"
distinctions in citizens’ voting rights, Holt , 439 U.S. at 87
(Brennan, J., dissenting). Although the Holt Court at times
seemed to endorse unequivocally the validity of geographic
restrictions on the franchise, see id. at 68-69 ("[O]ur cases
have uniformly recognized that a government unit may
legitimately restrict the right to participate in its political
processes to those who reside within its borders."), the
Court acknowledged that in "a situation in which a city has
annexed outlying territory in all but name, and is exercising
precisely the same governmental powers over residents of
the surrounding . . . territory as it does over those residing
within its corporate limits," constitutional problems may
well arise where the residents of the outlying territory have
no say in the election of the city’s officials. Id. at 72 n.8
(citing Little Thunder). Moreover, the Court took care to
observe that although the interests of Holt residents were
undoubtedly affected to a large degree by the powers
exercised by Tuscaloosa’s city government, Tuscaloosa’s
powers over Holt did not include certain "vital and
traditional authorities of cities and towns," such as zoning,
the power to levy ad valorem taxes, and eminent domain.
Id. at 72 n.8.6
_________________________________________________________________
6. Justice Stevens elaborated on this point in his concurring opinion by
noting the "limited" nature of the extraterritorial powers exercised by
15
However, even assuming that Little Thunder is apposite
(in fact we think it factually distinguishable), the plaintiffs
do not acknowledge the extent to which the Supreme
Court’s opinion in Holt, issued three years after Little
Thunder, cut back on the Eighth Circuit’s analytical
technique of taking non-residents’ "interests" into account.
In particular, whereas the Little Thunder Court seemed to
conclude that residency requirements are permissible only

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"when they are designed to insure that only voters who
have a substantial interest in the outcome of elections will
participate," 518 F.2d at 1256, the Supreme Court in Holt
recognized that territorial restrictions on the franchise may
be valid even where the decisions of a municipality have a
"heav[y] impact" on non-residents excluded from its political
processes. 439 U.S. at 69-70.
It seems to us, therefore, that the Court in Holt took care
to eschew a rigidly formalistic reliance on geography in
assessing the constitutionality of a territorial voting
restriction, but at the same time required that something
more than what the Little Thunder Court termed the
"substantial interest[s]" of the non-residents to have been
affected for a territorial restriction to violate the principle of
"one person, one vote." We read Holt as meaning that strict
scrutiny will be applied to the exclusion of non-residents
from the elections of a particular governmental entity only
when that unit of government exercises a level of control
over the non-residents’ lives close to or equal to that which
it exercises over those who actually reside within its
borders. However, the mere fact that a municipality’s
actions may have an impact -- even a substantial impact --
on non-residents does not entitle those non-residents to
vote in the municipality’s elections. See Holt , 439 U.S. at
69-70 (noting that despite the fact that a city’s decisions
may have "dramatic extraterritorial effects" on non-
_________________________________________________________________
Tuscaloosa. Holt, 439 U.S. at 77. Moreover, Justice Stevens noted that
even though Holt residents could not vote in Tuscaloosa’s municipal
elections, they were entitled to vote for county officials, and were thereby
"not without any voice in the election of the officials who govern their
affairs." Id. at 77.
16
residents, those non-residents are not entitled to vote in the
city’s elections).
Applying this tempered view of Holt, we are constrained
to hold that the residents of Lincoln Park have no right to
vote in the election of Boonton’s School Board. This is not
a case in which the Boonton Board "exercis[es] precisely the
same governmental powers over residents of [Lincoln Park]
as it does over those residing within its [district’s] limits."
Id. at 72 n.8. Lincoln Park residents are subject to the
extraterritorial powers of the Boonton Board only with
respect to their high school-aged children. For matters
concerning K-8 education, the residents of Lincoln Park
exercise exclusive control through their own school board
elected solely by Lincoln Park residents. Moreover, the
Boonton Board’s control over high school education is only
one of its many responsibilities affecting the residents of
Boonton. The Board is also responsible for the district’s K-8
educational program, as well as matters that affect the
district as a whole, such as school facilities and the
district’s central administrative staff.

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The plaintiffs contend that Holt is distinguishable
because this case concerns education, "a vital government
function," Hadley, 397 U.S. at 56, whereas Holt involved
less important governmental services like police protection
and business licensing. See Holt, 439 U.S. at 77 (Stevens,
J., concurring) (noting that the extraterritorial powers of
Tuscaloosa over the residents of Holt were "limited" in part
because Tuscaloosa exercised no power over Holt’s schools).
While we do not gainsay that education is a governmental
function of the utmost importance, see Brown v. Bd. of
Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954) (noting that"education is
perhaps the most important function of state and local
governments"), we doubt the viability of that distinction in
this context. At all events, we think that the extraterritorial
power over education exercised by the Boonton Board is
itself "limited" for the reasons described above: the Boonton
Board controls only four of the thirteen years of a Lincoln
Park child’s education and Lincoln Park possesses its own
school board elected exclusively by Lincoln Park residents
for the governance of K-8 affairs. Moreover, Lincoln Park
residents are not without any voice in the governance of
17
Boonton High, for state law, as explained above, entitles the
Lincoln Park Board to appoint a representative to the
Boonton Board. That person may speak at Board meetings
to convey Lincoln Park’s view. He or she also has a vote on
matters that primarily affect the high school. See N.J.S.A.
S 18A:38-8.1.
Additionally, New Jersey has legitimate reasons for
limiting the representation of Lincoln Park in the Boonton
Board’s decisions. As noted above, under New Jersey law
there is always the possibility that Lincoln Park, as a
sending district, might sever its relationship with Boonton.
See N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-13. As a result, it can fairly be said
that Lincoln Park residents do not have the same vested
interest in the long-term affairs of the Boonton school
district -- such as capital improvements, employee pension
plans, and other long-term commitments -- as do Boonton
residents. Moreover, as discussed earlier, some of the items
on which a sending district’s representative is entitled to
vote affect more than just the school that the district’s
students attend. See, e.g., N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.1(d)
(selection "of the receiving district’s central administrative
staff "). It makes sense, therefore, for New Jersey to limit
the power of the sending district’s representative so as to
preserve the receiving district’s control over matters that
affect the school district as a whole.
Perhaps in an ideal system of government, the residents
of Lincoln Park would be entitled to a level of representation
on the Boonton Board that is exactly proportional to their
level of "interest" in the Board’s functions, if such a figure
could be calculated. Indeed, the District Court, through its
remedy’s mathematical formula for determining different
levels of representation for Lincoln Park as to different
issues addressed by the Boonton Board, appears to have

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attempted to achieve such precision. The Constitution,
however, does not require that a system of government be
"the soundest or most practical form of internal government
possible" from "a political science standpoint." Holt, 439
U.S. at 73-74. Rather, imprecision in democratic
representation is tolerated, so long as the basic principles
of "one person, one vote," described above, are not offended.
18
While well-intentioned, the District Court’s remedy has
the potential to involve the judiciary in what is an
essentially legislative role. The complex policy decisions
involved in apportioning representation where a school
board exercises limited power over students from another
district and where the relationship between a sending and
receiving district is far from permanent are decisions best
left to a legislature. See Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 620-625
(Harlan, J., dissenting) (arguing that questions of
democratic apportionment are best left to the legislature).
This is especially so in the context of education policy, an
area in which the Supreme Court has repeatedly
admonished the judiciary to be wary of intervention. As the
Court observed in San Antonio Independent School District
v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973):
Education . . . presents a myriad of intractable
economic, social, and even philosophical problems. The
very complexity of the problems of financing and
managing a statewide public school system suggests
that there will be more than one constitutionally
permissible method of solving them, and that, within
the limits of rationality, the legislature’s efforts to
tackle the problems should be entitled to respect. .. .
In such circumstances, the judiciary is well advised to
refrain from imposing on the States inflexible
constitutional restraints that could circumscribe or
handicap the continued research and experimentation
so vital to finding even partial solutions to educational
problems and to keeping abreast of ever-changing
conditions.
Id. at 42-43 (internal quotation marks and citations
omitted).
Indeed, the very complexity of the District Court’s remedy
illustrates why intervention in this area is better suited to
the state legislature than to the judiciary. Under the
Court’s remedy, as discussed above, four members of the
Lincoln Park Board would be entitled to sit on a thirteen-
member Boonton Board with the votes of the Lincoln Park
delegation weighted by a factor of 2.5 in matters affecting
only the high school and 0.7 in matters affecting the
district as a whole. This remedy threatens to make a math
19
lesson out of every meeting of the Boonton Board. While the

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Court proffered its remedy as only an interim solution
pending action by the New Jersey state legislature (which is
something that the Court could neither compel nor, with
any degree of confidence, expect), the rationale of the
Court’s opinion and its remedy -- which seem to require
that Lincoln Park’s representation on the Boonton Board
comport almost exactly to its share of the student
population -- appear to leave the state legislature little
room within which to maneuver.
For all of these reasons, we are satisfied that N.J.S.A.
S 18A:38-8.2 as applied to Lincoln Park does not violate the
principle of "one person, one vote." Consequently, we need
not review the statute under strict scrutiny.7
_________________________________________________________________
7. In urging us to reverse the District Court, the defendants stressed in
their briefs and at oral argument what they describe as the "voluntary"
nature of the Lincoln Park-Boonton relationship. By"voluntarily"
deciding to enter the send-receive relationship with Boonton, the
defendants claim, Lincoln Park cannot now claim to be dissatisfied with
the terms of the send-receive agreement, for Lincoln Park residents have
made the decision that they would rather send their children to another
district’s high school and pay tuition than build a high school of their
own, even if this arrangement means that some degree of autonomy over
their children’s high school education will be sacrificed.
We are satisfied that there has been no violation of"one person, one
vote" for the reasons stated in the text, and do not rely on the
defendants’ "voluntariness" argument. This argument, like the
defendants’ argument regarding ripeness, see supra note 4, confuses the
collective nature of action taken by the Lincoln Park School Board with
the individual right asserted by English in this litigation. The case law on
"one person, one vote" makes clear that English’s equal protection rights
may not be sacrificed merely because a majority of his fellow citizens
have consented to sacrifice their own rights. See Lucas v. Forty-fourth
Gen. Assembly of Colo., 377 U.S. 713, 736-37 (1964) ("An individual’s
constitutionally protected right to cast an equally weighted vote cannot
be denied even by a vote of a majority of a State’s electorate . . . .") ("A
citizen’s constitutional rights can hardly be infringed simply because a
majority of the people choose that it be."); see also Holt, 439 U.S. at 76
(Stevens, J., concurring) (noting that neither a municipality nor a state
"can consent to a waiver of the constitutional rights of its constituents
in the election process"); Baker v. Reg’l High Sch. Dist., 520 F.2d 799 (2d
Cir. 1975) (finding violation of "one person, one vote" principle despite
fact that the district in which the plaintiff resided had consented to the
joint board of education’s representation scheme); Barnes v. Bd. of Dirs.,
418 F. Supp. 845 (D. Vt. 1978) (same); Leopold v. Young, 340 F. Supp.
1014 (D. Vt. 1972) (same).
20
C. Rational Basis Review
Having concluded that the principle of "one person, one
vote" is not offended, we must ask only whether N.J.S.A.
S 18A:38-8.2 as applied to Lincoln Park "bear[s] some
rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose." Holt,
439 U.S. at 70. "Rational relationship" review is, of course,

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a very deferential standard, under which "a law will be
sustained . . . even if the law seems unwise or works to the
disadvantage of a particular group, or if the rationale for it
seems tenuous." Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 632 (1996).
So long as strict scrutiny is not implicated, states enjoy
significant latitude in the design of local governments, for
"the Constitution and this Court are not roadblocks in the
path of innovation, experiment, and development among
units of local governments." Avery, 390 U.S. at 485. Indeed,
this deference to state legislative judgment is particularly
appropriate in the realm of educational policy, where, as
noted, "[t]he very complexity of the problems of financing
and managing a statewide public school system suggests
that ‘there will be more than one constitutionally
permissible method of solving them’ and that, within the
limits of rationality, ‘the legislature’s efforts to tackle the
problems’ should be entitled to respect." Rodriguez, 411
U.S. at 42 (quoting Jefferson v. Hackney, 406 U.S. 535,
546-47 (1972)).
Applying this deferential standard of review, we conclude
that the application of N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.2 to Lincoln Park
is not irrational. In allocating one representative to sending
districts that provide more than 10 % of a receiving school’s
population, New Jersey seeks to allow a sending district
some voice -- but only a modest voice -- in the receiving
district’s affairs. For the reasons described above, New
Jersey has legitimate reasons for limiting the input of a
sending district in the receiving district’s board’s decisions.
As discussed, a sending district, at least in theory, may at
some point sever its relationship with the receiving district.
Consequently, Lincoln Park’s residents do not have the
same vested interest in the long-term affairs of the Boonton
school district as do Boonton residents. Moreover, as we
earlier observed, some of the items on which a sending
district’s representative is entitled to vote affect more than
21
just the school its district’s students attend. See, e.g.,
N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.1(d) (selection "of the receiving district’s
central administrative staff "). In sum, we do not consider it
irrational for New Jersey to limit the power of the sending
district’s representative so as to preserve the receiving
district’s control over matters that affect the school district
as a whole.
We recognize that under N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.2, a sending
district that provides 90 % of the students in particular
grades of a receiving district will be entitled to the same
number of representatives on the receiving district’s school
board -- one -- as a sending district that provides only 10
% of the students at particular levels. However, the mere
fact that N.J.S.A. S 18A:38-8.2’s representation scheme
might have been crafted with more precision "[f]rom a
political science standpoint" does not mean that the current
system is irrational, for "this Court does not sit to
determine whether [New Jersey] has chosen the soundest
or most practical form of internal government possible."

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439 U.S. at 73-74. Rather, because we conclude that the
New Jersey send-receive representation scheme "bear[s]
some rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose," we
will uphold it as applied to Lincoln Park. Id. at 70; accord
Hawkins v. Johanns, 88 F. Supp. 2d 1027 (D. Neb. 2000)
(upholding similar send-receive scheme under rational
basis review despite fact that sending district received no
representation on the receiving district’s school board).
For the foregoing reasons we will reverse the order of the
District Court granting summary judgment to the plaintiff,
and remand with directions that the Court grant the
defendants’ cross-motions for summary judgment.
A True Copy:
Teste:
Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit
22

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