The Palau Trial Court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Jackson Ngiraingas against the Palau Reapportionment Commission, which challenged the commission’s decision to maintain a single senatorial district.
The court ruled that the English and Palauan versions of Article IX, Section 4(a) of the Palau Constitution can be read together. The Palauan version uses the word “ma,” meaning “and,” while the English version uses “or.” The court found that “the most logical integration of these two versions is that the commission has the choice to create one or both plans based on their best judgment.” This interpretation, the court added, aligns with the framers’ intent to give the Reapportionment Commission broad discretion in creating election schemes.
The court also referred to a previous interpretation by the Appellate Division, which stated that “reapportionment” and “redistricting” may be used interchangeably.
Ngiraingas’s argument that the plan must be “new or different” was also dismissed. The court cited a prior ruling from the Appellate Division in Congressional Reapportionment Commission v. Bulteldaob (2016), which stated that the Constitution does not require a “purely arbitrary change every eight years.”
The court further emphasized that “the Commission may choose to retain the same plan if it believes it aligns most closely with the ‘one person, one vote’ principle, and it need not create both a reapportionment and a redistricting plan.”