Reynolds v. Sims

The right to vote includes more than the formal ability to cast a ballot. It includes the right to have one's vote counted with substantially equal weight. Giving the same number of legislators to districts with dramatically unequal populations effectively gives some voters several times the political power of others and dilutes the votes of residents of larger districts.

Legislators represent people, not geographic acreage, farms, counties, or economic interests. Because state legislators exercise governmental power over all citizens, all qualified voters stand in the same relevant relation to the election of those legislators. Equal protection therefore requires equal and effective participation in that electoral process.

The Court treated population as the starting point and controlling criterion for legislative apportionment. A system that permits a minority of the population to elect a majority of a legislature frustrates majority rule and denies citizens in underrepresented districts an equally effective voice in state government.

Equal population is required in both chambers. A State cannot comply by apportioning only one house by population while allowing the other to be controlled by less populous districts, because the malapportioned house could block the will of a population-based majority through its legislative veto power.

Alabama's existing plan was an extreme example of vote dilution. Based on 1960 population figures, districts electing a Senate majority contained only about one-quarter of the State's population, and the population disparity among Senate districts reached roughly 41-to-1. The House similarly allowed a minority of the population to elect a majority, with striking disparities between urban and rural counties.

The 67-Senator Amendment would have made every county a single-member Senate district, regardless of population. That arrangement would have enabled the State's 34 smallest counties, whose combined population was less than Jefferson County's, to elect a Senate majority. Its House plan improved urban representation but still guaranteed each county a seat and left population disparities too large to meet the constitutional standard.

The Crawford-Webb Act modestly altered district lines but did not cure the fundamental defect. Its Senate plan still allowed districts representing only 27.6% of the population to elect a majority, and its House plan continued to assign substantially unequal representation to counties of sharply different population.

Equal representation in the federal Senate arose from the unique constitutional compromise that joined formerly sovereign States into a federal Union. The arrangement is embedded in the federal Constitution and reflects the distinct constitutional status of States as separate sovereign governmental entities.

Counties and municipalities, by contrast, are subordinate political subdivisions created by the State to administer state functions. They do not possess the independent sovereign status that States possessed when they entered the Union. Equal representation for counties therefore cannot be defended by analogy to equal state representation in the United States Senate.

The Court also rejected the premise that bicameralism requires one chamber to represent land areas or local units rather than people. States may create institutional differences between their two houses through different terms, district structures, chamber sizes, and other arrangements, but neither chamber may substantially submerge population as the governing basis for representation.

Mathematical exactness is not constitutionally required. It is practically impossible to draw every legislative district with precisely identical population, and state legislative apportionment may allow somewhat more flexibility than congressional districting because States generally must draw many more districts within their borders.

States may reasonably seek compact and contiguous districts, respect political-subdivision boundaries, and use single-member, multimember, or other district arrangements. Those choices can serve legitimate interests, including limiting opportunities for partisan gerrymandering, but they remain subordinate to the overriding objective of substantial population equality.

History, area alone, rural interests, and economic interests cannot justify significant departures from equal population. People cast votes, and the fact that a citizen lives in a rural rather than urban location is not a sufficient constitutional reason to give that citizen's ballot greater weight.

A State may give some consideration to political subdivisions as governmental units, especially where local legislation is significant. But it cannot guarantee every county or subdivision a separate seat when doing so effectively displaces population as the controlling consideration and causes substantial vote dilution.

A state apportionment scheme does not become immune from federal constitutional review because it appears in the state constitution rather than a statute. Where state law conflicts with the Federal Constitution, the Supremacy Clause controls. Courts should accommodate state constitutional provisions where possible, but they must protect federal constitutional rights when accommodation is impossible.

Congressional acceptance of state constitutions at admission to the Union does not validate a present violation of individual rights under the Equal Protection Clause. Congress cannot insulate an unconstitutional state apportionment system from judicial review merely by having accepted a State into the Union.

The Equal Protection Clause does not require continuous reapportionment. Stability in legislative districts is a legitimate interest, and decennial reapportionment is a rational and generally sufficient method of accounting for population changes. A plan that readjusts representation substantially less often, however, is constitutionally suspect.

Legislative reapportionment is primarily a task for the legislature. A court should ordinarily allow state officials a reasonable opportunity to correct constitutional defects before imposing its own plan, and the Alabama district court initially followed that approach.

Once a legislature has failed to act effectively, a federal court generally must ensure that future elections are not held under an unconstitutional system. The timing and form of relief remain equitable questions: courts may consider imminent elections, the status of election machinery, and the practical disruption that immediate changes could cause.

The district court acted with appropriate restraint by adopting a temporary plan drawn from the least objectionable portions of Alabama's proposals, retaining jurisdiction, and leaving the provisionally reapportioned legislature an opportunity to enact a valid permanent arrangement. The Court affirmed and remanded for further proceedings consistent with the population-based standard.