Although many Americans take “one man, one vote” for granted today as a concept, this was far from always so, and this only changed sixty years ago. One can talk about the lower relative value of a vote in nationwide elections, but that’s not what I am discussing here. And for the record, I for one don’t mind too terribly that my vote as a resident of Washington is regarded as less important than the vote of someone from Nevada. If Washington voters really wanted greater relevance that badly, they would vote less Democratic. What I am discussing is the rough equality in population size of districts, and indeed states used to have full command over legislative apportionment. However, the postwar environment was one for change and for lessening the power of states. In 1947, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government for title U.S. v. California, depriving the state of much revenue over loss of title over offshore oil deposits. In 1946, in his opinion of the decision Colegrove v. Green in which Illinois’ state legislative districts were upheld, Justice Felix Frankfurter, far from regarded as a political conservative, cautioned against the Supreme Court entering the “political thicket” of state legislative reapportionment. This remained the state of affairs during the Vinson Court, but after Chief Justice Fred Vinson’s death in 1953, Earl Warren was confirmed as chief justice. Warren had different ideas about the trajectory of the court in many ways, and in 1956 he was joined on the court by William Brennan, a man who President Eisenhower mistakenly assumed would be a conservative Democrat on the court. The team of Warren as leader and Brennan as the legal brains, the Warren Court, rather than Congress or the White House, took the lead on social policy. And of all the far-reaching decisions made by the Warren Court on civil rights and the rights of criminal defendants, Chief Justice Warren regarded their rulings on legislative reapportionment to be the most important. In 1962, Charles W. Baker and other Tennesseans sued the state, alleging that a 1901 reapportionment law was being ignored by the state, resulting in districts malapportioned by a failure to adjust to population growth and shifts (Oyez, Baker). the Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Carr 6-2 that redistricting was a justiciable question under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Justice Brennan wrote the opinion and was joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Black with Justices Douglas, Clark, and Stewart issuing concurring opinions. Dissenting were Justices Frankfurter and Harlan. Frankfurter was sticking to his guns on refusing to intervene on political questions and Harlan held that the 14th Amendment didn’t apply to voting, as this was the purview of the 15th Amendment. One justice was absent, however. Charles Whittaker, who was struggling to find his own way on the court ideologically, finally suffered a nervous breakdown and his inability to decide broke him. With the stage set for a ruling to rule legislative districts unconstitutional, this happened in Reynolds v. Sims (1964), with the court ruling 8-1 (Frankfurter had retired by this point), when the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s legislative districts were unconstitutional. Justice Stewart concurred, but held that only obvious violations of the equal protection clause should be struck down (Oyez, Reynolds). That same year, another case, Wesberry v. Sanders was decided 6-3. This decision held that Georgia’s Congressional districts were a violation of the Equal Protection Clause (Oyez, Wesberry). Joining Harlan in dissent this time were Stewart and Clark.
Congress Responds
The decisions on legislative reapportionment, particularly Reynolds v. Sims (1964), were met with outrage by conservatives in Congress. That year, Congressman William M. Tuck (D-Va.) proposed a bill removing state legislative apportionment from the jurisdiction of federal courts. This measure met with initial success as it passed the House 218-175 (D 96-140, R 122-35) on August 19th. Although the vote fell on largely ideological lines, there were a few interesting details in the vote. For instance, in a few states, the most conservative of its representatives were voting against it. In Oklahoma, Republican Page Belcher and Democrat John Jarman voted against, and they were the only two representatives from the state to vote against the Economic Opportunity Act that year. Same goes for Republican Gene Snyder of Louisville, Kentucky. In Tennessee, Democrats Richard Fulton (Nashville) and Clifford Davis (Memphis) plus Republican Bill Brock (Chattanooga) voted against. A few Republicans it seems had overriding interests in shaking up the Democratic status quo of the states they were representing. In Alabama, the state of the lawsuit, only George Huddleston (Birmingham) voted against, as Birmingham stood to gain in representation from Reynolds. Birmingham had had 41 times the population of one of Alabama’s districts yet still only got one representative as it was contained in one county (Oyez, Reynolds). it faltered in the Senate. This measure attracted a lot of support from Midwestern and Southern states, the conservatives eager to curb the power of growing cities. Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) was a particularly strong opponent of “one man, one vote” as he feared that Democratic Chicago would come to dominate the state’s politics (was he wrong on that one?) and he proposed an amendment to the Constitution in response that would permit one House of a bicameral legislature to be apportioned on factors other than population, including geography and political subdivisions. Liberal critics condemned the amendment as the “rotten borough amendment”. The amendment was voted on in the Senate both in 1965 and in 1966. In the first vote, the Senate failed to ratify 57-39 (D 28-36, R 29-3) on August 4th, the three Republican dissenters were Cale Boggs of Delaware, Clifford Case of New Jersey, and Jacob Javits of New York. The latter two were the most liberal of the Senate Republicans. The only three senators from the former Confederacy to vote against were Tennessee’s Ross Bass and Albert Gore and Texas’s liberal stalwart Ralph Yarborough. The second time around the vote failed 55-38 (D 26-35, R 29-3) on April 20th. The only senator whose position changed was Montana Democrat Lee Metcalf, who switched from “yea” to “nay” between the first and second votes.
Although the proposal could have potentially been voted on in the next Congress, the Senate’s numbers weren’t much better for conservatives…liberals had a strong bench even for politically popular proposals. The push for curbing the court’s authority on legislative apportionment died down and especially so after Dirksen’s death in 1969. Now state redistricting is a regular subject of judicial review, and multiple cases make their way up to the Supreme Court.
References
Baker v. Carr (1962). Oyez.
Retrieved from
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/6
H.R. 11926. Bar the Supreme Court and Lower Federal Courts Jurisdiction Over Matters Dealing with State Legislative Reapportionment. Passage. Govtrack.
Retrieved from
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h220
Reynolds v. Sims (1964). Oyez.
Retrieved from
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1963/23
To Pass S.J. Res. 66, a Proposal for a Constitutional Amendment Permitting Apportionment of One House of a Bicameral State Legislature Using Population, Geography, and Political Subdivisions as Factors. Govtrack.
Retrieved from
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/s177
To Pass S.J. Res. 103, a Proposed Constitutional Amendment Permitting Apportionment of One House of a Bicameral State Legislature Using Population, Geography, and Political Subdivisions as Factors. Govtrack.
Retrieved from
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1966/s289
Wesberry v. Sanders (1964). Oyez.
Retrieved from
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 