Cite as: 507 U. S. 25 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
lated the Voting Rights Act, while the Cotlow complaint never invoked that statute. Germano, however, does not require that the federal and state-court complaints be identical; it instead focuses on the nature of the relief requested: reapportionment of election districts. Minnesota can have only one set of legislative districts, and the primacy of the State in designing those districts compels a federal court to defer.
The District Court also expressed concern over the lack of time for orderly appeal, prior to the State's primaries, of any judgment that might issue from the state court, noting that Minnesota allows the losing party 90 days to appeal. See Minn. Rule Civ. App. Proc. 104.01. We fail to see the relevance of the speed of appellate review. Germano requires only that the state agencies adopt a constitutional plan "within ample time . . . to be utilized in the [upcoming] election," 381 U. S., at 409. It does not require appellate review of the plan prior to the election, and such a requirement would ignore the reality that States must often redistrict in the most exigent circumstances—during the brief interval between completion of the decennial federal census and the primary season for the general elections in the next even-numbered year. Our consideration of this appeal, long after the Minnesota primary and final elections have been held, itself reflects the improbability of completing judicial review before the necessary deadline for a new redistricting scheme.
It may be useful to describe what ought to have happened with respect to each redistricting plan. The state court entered its judgment adopting its modified version of Chapter 246 in late January (nearly three weeks before the federal court issued its opinion). That final order, by declaring the legislature's version of Chapter 246 unconstitutional and adopting a legislative plan to replace it, altered the status quo: The state court's plan became the law of Minnesota. At the very least, the elementary principles of federalism and comity embodied in the full faith and credit statute, 28
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