14
Establishing Equality in
Voting and Representation
Baker v. Carr (1962)
Reynolds v. Sims (1964)
Baker v. Carr
• 369 U.S. 186 (1962)
• Decided: March 26, 1962
• Vote: 6–2
• Opinion of the Court: William J.
Brennan
• Concurring opinions: William O.
Douglas, Tom Clark, and Potter
Stewart
• Dissenting opinions: Felix
Frankfurter and John Marshall
Harlan II
• Not participating: Charles E.
Whittaker
Reynolds v. Sims
• 377 U.S. 533 (1964)
• Decided: June 15, 1964
• Vote: 8–1
• Opinion of the Court: Earl Warren
• Concurring opinions: Tom Clark and
Potter Stewart
• Dissenting opinion: John Marshall
Harlan II
120 The Pursuit of Justice
R
epresentative democracy has deep roots in the United States. It is based
on free, fair, competitive, and periodic elections by which citizens
vote to choose their representatives in government. These representatives of the people—chosen by a majority, or a plurality, of the voters— serve
the interests and needs of their constituents. When the people’s representatives make decisions and otherwise carry out their duties in the government,
there is an expectation of accountability. If they do not satisfy the citizens they
represent, then most voters are likely to cast their ballots for someone else or
for another political party in the next election.
Given the centrality of the electoral process in a representative democracy, the right to vote is the citizen’s most precious political possession. By
using the vote responsibly, citizens can contribute significantly to the achievement of good government.
But what if some votes count more than others? Can there be an authentic representative democracy if equal representation of constituents is not
achieved through the electoral process? Can government be fair, if the interests of some groups of voters have more weight than those of less privileged
groups in the decisions of their representatives?
Public concern about questions of equality in voting, and in the representation of voters, led to a series of notable cases at the Supreme Court. The
first of these cases, Baker v. Carr in 1962, and the last, Reynolds v. Sims in
1964, yielded the pivotal decisions that established, once and for all, the fundamental democratic principle of “one person, one vote” also with regard to
Congressional elections.
These Supreme Court decisions were made in response to unequal representation in state governments and disparate voting power of citizens residing
in different places within the states. When each legislator represents an electoral district with approximately the same number of people, then the voting
power of the people in all districts of the state is roughly equal. But this kind
of equality in representation and voting power was nonexistent in most parts
of the country. This inequity developed during the first half of the twentieth
century when the distribution of the nation’s population changed.
Representation of voters in state governments throughout the United
States became more and more unequal due to mass movements of people
from rural to urban residences. During the 1920s, for the first time in American history, more people were living in cities than in rural areas, but in most
states, the government had not changed the legislative districts to reflect this
dramatic change. The result was disproportionate voting power for people living
in underpopulated and overrepresented rural districts.
In 1960 nearly every state had some urban legislative districts with populations that were at least twice as large as those in the state’s rural districts. In Alabama, for example, the smallest congressional district had a population of 6,700
and the largest had a population of more than 104,000; nonetheless, each district
had one congressional seat. In a representative democracy, people’s votes possess equal value only when each member of the legislative body represents approximately the same number of people.
Clearly, the people in more populous urban districts and the people in the
less populous rural districts were not represented equally. Consequently, city
and suburban problems did not receive appropriate attention in state legislatures that were dominated by representatives from districts with many farms and
small towns. The powerful rural representatives refused to redistrict in order to
ensure that each member of the legislature would represent roughly the same
number of people. Some simply ignored the sections of their state constitutions
requiring redistricting every ten years. Others merely redistricted and reapportioned representation in ways that continued to favor rural interests. There was
little voters could do to change things through the electoral process, because apportionment of representatives heavily favored the rural areas, which stubbornly
resisted reform.
Disgruntled urban leaders turned to the legal process to seek equitable representation in government. Charles Baker, the mayor of Millington, Tennessee,
a rapidly growing suburb of Memphis, and the leader of the legislative reapportionment movement in Tennessee, was extremely frustrated by the indifference
of state legislators to problems in the rapidly growing cities of Tennessee. The
state lawmakers routinely snubbed petitions for assistance from urban leaders
such as Baker, because the cities of Tennessee were grossly underrepresented
in the legislature. By contrast, the overrepresented rural voters got most of the
attention and benefits from the state government, because they were the constituents of the vast majority of the legislators.
Approximately 11 percent of the state’s population lived in the rural areas
of Tennessee, but more than 60 percent of the representatives in the state legislature were elected by voters residing in the rural areas. Because of this imbalance, the legislature neglected the problems and needs of urban voters. For
example, the leader of the Tennessee House of Representatives said, “I believe
in collecting the taxes where the money is—in the cities—and spending it where
it’s needed—in the country.”
As state government officials were unwilling to reform the electoral system, Charles Baker turned to the federal courts for relief. In 1959, he brought
suit against Joseph Cordell Carr, the Tennessee secretary of state, to force reapportionment of the legislature. But the federal district court dismissed the suit
because of the legal precedent set in Colegrove v. Green (1946).
The Colegrove case involved reapportionment in Illinois, where population
distribution in congressional districts was similar to the situation in Tennessee.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court did not respond to this problem. Writing for
the Court’s majority in Colegrove, Justice Felix Frankfurter dismissed the case
for lack of jurisdiction, which means that the Court had no authority or legal
right to consider this case. Frankfurter held that this case was not justiciable.
That is, it was not an appropriate case for the Court to decide, because it posed
Establishing Equality in Voting and Representation 121
political questions properly settled by the executive and legislative branches
of government, whose leading members are elected by the people. He said, “It
is hostile to a democratic system to involve the judiciary in the politics of the
people.” He concluded with the admonition that the courts “ought not enter this
political thicket.”
Charles Baker appealed the district court’s decision, and in 1962 his case
went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which seemed interested in reconsidering the
issues first presented to it by Colegrove in 1946. Only one of the Court’s majority in Colegrove, Justice Frankfurter, was still a member of the Court in 1962.
But two of the dissenters, Justices Black and Douglas, remained and they influenced Chief Justice Warren and the other justices to side with them in accepting
the Baker v. Carr case. Charles Rhyne, counsel for Charles Baker, argued that
urban voters in Tennessee were denied the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. He requested that the state be ordered
to redraw its legislative districts so that each person’s vote would be of equal
weight. The Court, however, restricted its decision to questions of whether the
Court should hear the case; that is to issues about jurisdiction, justiciabililtiy,
and standing—a direct interest in the outcome of the case. Thus, the Court decided not to pass judgment on the merits of the complaint brought by the plaintiff about unequal and unfair representation of voters in the state legislature.
Nonetheless, the Court’s decision in Baker overturned the precedent established
in the 1946 Colegrove case, which was a significant breakthrough for the cause
of electoral reform.
Justice William Brennan, writing for the majority, ruled that the Court had
jurisdiction or authority to hear this case; he said that “the right [to equal apportionment of representation] is within the reach of judicial protection under
the Fourteenth Amendment.” Brennan held that Baker and his associates had
standing to bring this complaint to the Court; because as registered voters in an
underrepresented urban area, they had an undeniable claim to injury based on
unequal representation and thus a stake in the outcome of this case.
The most important part of Brennan’s ruling was that the issue in this case
was not a political question and thus was justiciable, or appropriate for the judiciary to decide. He held that the issue in Baker v. Carr was not a political
question because it had nothing to do with the principle of separation of powers
among the three coordinate branches of government: “[W]e have no questions
decided, or to be decided, by a political branch of government coequal with the
Court.” Justice Brennan stressed that the issues in the case did not pertain to
Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution, the guaranty of a republican form of
government. Questions involving this part of the Constitution were traditionally
understood to be outside the Court’s authority. Justice Brennan wrote,
Of course, the mere fact that the suit seeks protection of a political right does
not mean it presents a political question....Rather, it is argued that the apportionment cases...can involve no federal constitutional right except one resting on
the guaranty of a republican form of government [Article 4, Section 4], and the
complaints based on that clause have been held to present political questions
which are nonjusticiable. We hold that the claim pleaded here neither rests upon
nor implicates the guaranty Clause and that its justiciability is therefore not foreclosed by our decisions of cases involving that clause.
Brennan concluded “that the complaint’s allegations of a denial of equal
122 The Pursuit of Justice
protection [under the Fourteenth Amendment] present a justiciable constitutional cause.” Thus, Baker was entitled to a trial, and the case was
remanded (sent back) to the federal district court, which now had the authority to make a substantive decision in this case. The court decided in
favor of Baker.
Two justices, Felix Frankfurter and John Marshall Harlan II, dissented from
the Supreme Court’s decision in Baker v. Carr. In his final opinion as an associate justice (a heart attack forced his retirement on August 28, 1962), Frankfurter
lamented the overturning of precedent established in Colegrove v. Green, because he claimed the issue in Baker, as in Colegrove, was essentially political,
and not judicial. Thus, he argued, the issue should be left to the executive and
legislative branches to decide. Further, Frankfurter claimed that the Baker decision was a “massive repudiation of the experience of our whole past in asserting
destructively novel judicial power.” He said it departed from a long tradition of
judicial restraint that could be traced to the founding of the republic, whereby
the exercise of judicial power was curtailed in order to avoid usurping authority
belonging to the political branches of government.
Justice Harlan agreed strongly with Frankfurter, and he argued there was
nothing in the U.S. Constitution that required state legislatures to be apportioned
in order to equally represent each voter. Both dissenters asserted that the Court’s
decision in this case was a product of unwarranted judicial activism, which intruded wrongly into the democratic political process.
The dissenters’ opinions, however, were overwhelmed not only within the
Court but throughout the United States. Most major newspapers published favorable editorials about the Court’s decision, and public opinion generally seemed
to support it. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy spoke for the majority of
Americans when he called this decision “a landmark in the development of representative government.”
Baker v. Carr was the first in a series of cases that led to legislative redistricting throughout the nation. The principle of “one person, one vote”—often
associated with Baker —was actually expressed one year later by Justice Douglas in his opinion for the Court in Gray v. Sanders (1963). In this case, the Court
ruled against a Georgia law that assigned greater electoral weight to sparsely
populated rural counties than to heavily populated urban areas. In his argument
against the Georgia electoral system, Douglas wrote, “The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean
only one thing—one person, one vote.”
The culminating case on equality in voting and representation was Reynolds
v. Sims (1964), which originated in Alabama. Voters in Jefferson County, the
state’s most densely populated county, which included the big city of Birmingham, claimed that the unequal representation of citizens in Alabama districts
violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to establish equally populated electoral districts for both houses of
state legislatures. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that
plans for setting up legislative districts could not discriminate against people on
the basis of where they live (city versus country in this case) any more than they
could discriminate on the basis of a person’s race or economic status.
The Court rejected the idea that state legislatures could create electoral
Establishing Equality in Voting and Representation 123
districts differently for each of two houses of the state legislature—the representation in one house based on districts roughly equal in population and in
the other house based on equal representation of areas regardless of population
differences. Instead, Chief Justice Warren argued, the voters of a state must be
treated equally by equal representation of electoral districts in both houses of
the state legislature. “Legislators represent people, not trees or acres,” declared
the Chief Justice. Warren pointed out that counties within a state were not the
political equivalents of the states within the federal union of the United States.
Thus, unlike the states, which have equal representation in the Senate regardless
of differences in population, the counties within a state could not have equal
representation, regardless of population differences, in either house of a state
legislature.
The Court ruled that state legislatures did not have to draw legislative districts with “mathematical exactness or precision.” However, such districts did
have to be based “substantially” on equal population. The Court thus reinforced
a bedrock principle of electoral democracy: “one person, one vote.”
As he did in Baker v. Carr, two years before, Justice John Marshall Harlan
II dissented against the Court’s ruling, holding firm in his belief that redistricting
was an issue best left to the elected representatives of the people in the political
branches of state governments. He claimed, as he had in 1962, that this case
involved no violation of anyone’s constitutional rights.
The Court’s Reynolds decision was the end of a process initiated by Baker v.
Carr in 1962 that transformed the electoral landscape of America by establishing that rural minorities throughout the United States could no longer control
state legislatures. After this 1964 decision, forty-nine state legislatures reapportioned their legislative districts on the basis of equal population. (Oregon had
already done so in 1961.) This decision also affected national politics because
state legislatures draw the lines for the U.S. Congressional districts. This certainly was a great victory for urban voters throughout America. It was also a
triumph for the very idea of democracy, which entails rule by the people based
on the votes of the majority.
Reflecting on his illustrious career as chief justice of the United States, Earl
Warren said these cases were landmarks “in the development of representative
government.” Near the end of his life, Warren said the Court’s decisions in Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims —forever remembered as the “one person, one
vote” cases—were the most important ones decided during his sixteen years
as the chief justice, because they strengthened significantly the practice of democracy, government of the people, which is based on equality in voting and
representation.
124 The Pursuit of Justice
“The Right to Vote is the Greatest Civil Right”
After the Supreme Court decides to accept a case, a date and time for oral argument is
set. Attorneys on both sides of the case speak before the assembled justices in the chamber,
or courtroom, of the Supreme Court Building. It is a long-standing tradition for attorneys
to begin their formal presentations with the phrase, “May it please the Court.” The justices typically interrupt an attorney’s presentation with questions or comments. In 1955,
Chief Justice Earl Warren launched an oral history project—the audio recording of oral
arguments in cases that come before the Supreme Court. Charles Rhyne’s oral argument in
Baker v. Carr was recorded on April 19, 1961. Rhyne, representing Charles Baker, challenged the unequally apportioned voting districts in Tennessee and called for equality in
voting for representatives in government.
Warren: Mr. Rhyne?
Rhyne: Chief Justice Warren, and may it please
the Court.
This is a voting rights case. It’s brought here on
appeal by eleven Tennessee voters who seek federal court protection to end flagrant discrimination
against their right to vote. These eleven Tennessee
voters live in five of the largest cities of Tennessee.
They are the intended and actual victims of a statutory scheme which devalues, reduces, their right to
vote to about one-twentieth of the value of the vote
given to certain rural residents. Since the right to
vote is the greatest civil right, the most fundamental
civil right under our system of government, this system under the statute of Tennessee is as shocking as
it is purposeful and successful....
The way in which these voting rights of the
plaintiffs have been effectively denied—so effectively, we say, as to be effectively destroyed—is by
a so-called reapportionment statute adopted in 1901.
Now, the ultimate thrust of that statute today is that
one-third of the qualified voters living in the rural
areas of the state of Tennessee elect two-thirds of
the state legislature. Now, that 1901 statute...violates the requirement of equality in the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution of the United States
of America....
The Fourteenth Amendment strikes down discriminations whether they are sophisticated or simpleminded; and we think that, whether you cloak
it under the terms of reapportionment or any other
cloak,... that this is a discrimination which is clear
from the ers have a constitutional right that is in-
vaded and have standing to maintain this suit. Because a man’s right to vote is personal to him....And
when these people have their right to vote invaded,
diluted, rendered worthless or practically so by the
1901 act, it’s a personal wrong to them to have their
vote so affected....
Court [identity of the justice is undetermined]:
Do you claim that the Fourteenth Amendment requires that each person’s vote in the state be given
equal weight?
Rhyne: Reasonable equality, reasonable equality.
Court:As a matter of...
Rhyne: Not mathematical equality.
Court: Not mathematical equality?
Rhyne: But reasonable equality. I think that that
is the thrust of the equal protection of the laws requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment....
Frankfurter:Will you...tell us what the remedy
is to be here, other than to declare this unconstitutional?...
Rhyne: Number one, there is a clear violation of
a constitutional right. Number two, there is no reasonable basis for the voting discrimination which is
laid out in the complaint, and the defendants offer
no justifications for it, and they cannot offer it on
these facts.
And, as I have just said, there is no other remedy. We’re at the end of the road. If this is a judicial
no-man’s land, these people, the two-thirds of the
voters of Tennessee, are consigned to be secondclass citizens for the rest of their life, because these
defendants exalt their position into an untouchable
absolute.
Establishing Equality in Voting and Representation 125