Cite as: 507 U. S. 25 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Rights Act allegations. The Benson action was consolidated with the Emison suit; the Cotlow plaintiffs, as well as the Minnesota House of Representatives and State Senate, intervened.
With the legislature out of session, the committees' proposed curative measures for Chapter 246 pending, and the state court in Cotlow considering many of the same issues, the District Court granted the defendants' motion to defer further proceedings pending action by the Minnesota Legislature. It denied, however, defendants' motion to abstain in light of the Cotlow suit, or to allow the state court first to review any legislative action or, if the legislature failed to act, to allow the state court first to issue a court-ordered redistricting plan. The District Court set a January 20, 1992, deadline for the state legislature's action on both redistricting plans, and appointed special masters to develop contingent plans in the event the legislature failed to correct Chapter 246 or to reapportion Minnesota's eight congressional districts.
Meanwhile, the Cotlow panel concluded (in October) that Chapter 246, applied as written (i. e., with its drafting errors), violated both the State and Federal Constitutions, and invited the parties to submit alternative legislative plans based on Chapter 246. It also directed the parties to submit by mid-October written arguments on any Chapter 246 violations of the Voting Rights Act. In late November, the state court issued an order containing its preliminary legislative redistricting plan—essentially Chapter 246 with the technical corrections (though not the stylistic corrections) contained in Senate File 1596. (Since no party had responded to its order concerning Voting Rights Act violations, the court concluded that Chapter 246 did not run afoul of that Act.) It proposed putting its plan into effect on January 21, 1992, if the legislature had not acted by then. Two weeks later, after further argument, the Cotlow panel indicated it
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