Supreme Court upholds ‘one person, one vote’
Justices leave intact counting residents, a blow to conservatives
The Supreme Court refused Monday to change the way state and municipal voting districts are drawn, denying an effort by conservatives that could have increased the number of rural, mostly white districts at the expense of urban, largely Hispanic ones.
The “one person, one vote” case was among the most consequential of the high court’s term, and once again the court’s liberal wing won out.
The unanimous ruling left intact Texas’ method — followed by nearly all states — of counting all residents when drawing state and local voting districts.
Challengers had argued only eligible voters should be counted, a method that would have allowed states to ignore non-citizens and others who do not vote, including children. In most cases, that would have helped Republican candidates and hurt Democrats. More people would be packed into diverse, inner-city districts to account for non-voters, thereby creating more suburban and rural districts dominated by whites.
If the court had ruled that districts should be based on eligible voters rather than total population, states with large numbers of non-citizens would have seen the biggest change — Texas, California, New York, New Jersey, Arizona and Nevada among them. Cities such as Chicago and Miami also would have been affected.
Six justices signed on to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’s opinion, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the most conservative members of the court, concurred but did not rule out the potential benefit of counting voters. “Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 states and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries,” Ginsburg wrote.
Because challengers had sought to force a change to counting only eligible voters, the court did not rule on a lesser possibility — that states merely be allowed to switch to voters. But no states currently do so, partly because of the difficulty in counting voters rather than all residents.
“We need not and do not resolve whether, as Texas now argues, states may elect to draw districts to equalize voter population instead,” Ginsburg said.
Thomas and Alito agreed that Texas cannot be forced to switch to using only eligible voters in drawing districts, but they said switching is not necessarily unconstitutional.
“The choice is best left for the people of the states to decide for themselves how they should apportion their legislature,” Thomas wrote.
The equal protection clause of the Constitution is supposed to guarantee each person the same political power.
The problem is that the Supreme Court still has not decided who should be counted — all people, or just voters. The Texas decision, Evenwel v. Abbott, merely says states’ use of total population is constitutional.
Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, which initiated the case, expressed disappointment at the verdict.
“The issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away,” he said. “Some Supreme Court cases grow in importance over time, and Evenwel v. Abbott may likely be one of those cases.”
Adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 states and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her opinion