36
Opinion of the Court
U. S. C. § 1738, obligated the federal court to give that judgment legal effect, rather than treating it as simply one of several competing legislative redistricting proposals available for the District Court's choosing. See Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281, 286, 296 (1970). In other words, after January 30 the federal court was empowered to entertain the Emison plaintiffs' claims relating to legislative redistricting only to the extent those claims challenged the state court's plan. Cf. Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U. S. 535, 540 (1978) (opinion of White, J.).
With respect to the congressional plan, the District Court did not ignore any state-court judgment, but only because it had actively prevented such a judgment from issuing. The wrongfully entered December injunction prevented the Special Redistricting Panel from developing a contingent plan for congressional redistricting, as it had for legislative redistricting prior to the injunction. The state court's December order to the parties for mid-January submission of congressional plans was rendered a nullity by the injunction, which was not vacated until January 10. The net effect was a delay of at least a few weeks in the submissions to the state court, and in hearings on those submissions. A court may not acknowledge Germano in one breath and impede a state court's timely development of a plan in the next. It would have been appropriate for the District Court to establish a deadline by which, if the Special Redistricting Panel had not acted, the federal court would proceed. But the January 20 deadline that the District Court established here was explicitly directed solely at the legislature. The state court was never given a time by which it should decide on reapportionment, legislative or congressional, if it wished to avoid federal intervention.
Of course the District Court would have been justified in adopting its own plan if it had been apparent that the state court, through no fault of the District Court itself, would not develop a redistricting plan in time for the primaries.
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