To Mr. Smith, he said at one point: "Legislatures redraw maps all the time for political reasons.

During the next session, the Legislature will redraw all of the state's Congressional, State Senate and Assembly District boundaries.

But with little chance that the Legislature will redraw the statute itself, Ms. McCague has little choice.

"I feel confident that if the Legislature redraws them, we'll be able to maintain those districts," said State Senator Royce West, a lawyer from Dallas who is black and, like the majority of both houses in the Legislature, a Democrat.

North Carolina's Legislature must redraw the state's Congressional map next year and is likely to eliminate the black majority in the 12th District, which is represented by Melvin L. Watt, a black Democrat.

Democrats, typically champions of voting rights for Washingtonians, have opposed the Davis plan out of concern that Utah's Republican-controlled Legislature would redraw Congressional lines to unseat the state's lone Democrat in Congress, Jim Matheson.

In 1965, the judge ordered Governor Rockefeller and the Legislature to redraw legislative district lines to meet the United States Supreme Court's one-person one-vote edict.

Mr. Pataki should begin demanding that the Legislature redraw the district lines now drafted for this year's elections.

Aside from dealing with fiscal turmoil, this Legislature must also redraw New York's Congressional districts to conform with population shifts charted in the new United States Census.

The act will have statewide ramifications three or four years from now, when the Legislature redraws every Congressional and legislative district in the state after the 1990 census.