(Harrisburg) -- The state Supreme Court justices who voted down the final plan for new state House and Senate districts more than a week ago have filed their formal majority opinion. The opinion of Chief Justice Ronald Castille, who cast the tiebreaking fourth vote against the redistricting plan, says past appeals to reapportionment have been rejected because they did not prove the entire map could have been drawn better -– only how their particular region’s districts had been drawn unconstitutionally. Castille singles out two appeals -- one by the Senate Democrats, another by a self-taught mapmaker Republican committeewoman -– that, in particular, showed a consideration for the big picture. Most of the 12 appeals to the plan took issue with the number of counties and municipalities that were split. A lawyer for the Legislative Reapportionment Commission had argued the latest plan actually contained fewer splits than the redistricting plan approved a decade ago. He noted if the justices approved that, they couldn’t very well reject this plan. But, Castille writes, the Court’s past decisions were not intended to establish a certain number of acceptable splits.