A move to invalidate newly redrawn lines for San Luis Obispo County supervisorial districts has been thrown out by a Superior Court judge, bringing to a close the redistricting issue in the county.

“The court will not overturn the board (of supervisor)’s decision,” Judge Jac Crawford wrote.

Crawford’s judgment responded to a petition filed by Templeton resident William Pelfrey, who had argued that the Board of Supervisors should have kept the community of Templeton in one supervisor district when it adopted new boundaries Sept. 20.

Under the law, the districts must be reconfigured every 10 years, after the national census, in order to accommodate changes in the population.

A basic criterion of the redistricting is that all the districts have roughly the same population numbers. There are many other guidelines, including trying to keep "communities of interest" together.

Pelfrey said the board should not have split up Templeton.

But Crawford said supervisors had to consider the county as a whole, by law, and did so. He wrote that “there is no evidence that the board acted arbitrarily, capriciously, or entirely without evidentiary support” when it acted.

“Likewise, there is no evidence that that the board had ulterior motives, political or otherwise, in approving” the new lines, he wrote.

The final district maps put all of the Templeton Community Services District and 85 percent of the broader population of Templeton in the First District, currently represented by Frank Mecham. The other 15 percent is in the Fifth District, represented by Jim Patterson.

Before its final vote, the county made adjustments throughout its redistricting process, tweaking boundaries here and there in an effort to meet the guidelines.

To gather community input, the county held three public hearings, gave presentations in Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo, held workshops throughout the county and placed proposed maps on the county website.

The new boundaries will stand until after the federal census of 2020.