All eight Supreme Court justices rejected a lawsuit that would have required states to draw legislative districts based on the number of voters in the district, rather than the total population of a district.
“We hold, based on constitutional history, this court’s decisions, and longstanding practice, that a state may draw its legislative districts based on total population,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a controlling opinion joined by five other justices.
The decision stymies conservative activists who wanted the court to invalidate a Texas state legislative map that was based on total population, as is standard practice.
States determine the number of representatives needed for a given area based on population, and so a mandate that lawmakers only consider eligible voters when making that calculation would have resulted in the creation of fewer legislative districts in cities and other areas that tend to elect Democratic lawmakers.
The court held that non-citizens and prisoners have a stake in the governing body, even though they are not eligible to vote. “Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates — children, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system — and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies,” Ginsburg wrote.
“By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total-population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation.”
Although the decision was unanimous, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito rejected Ginsburg’s reasoning and offered separate opinions concurring in judgement. Alito’s concurrence rejected anything in Ginsburg’s argument that might lead the court in a future case to hold that the states are required to apportion districts based on total population.
“It is clear that the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based in substantial part on the distribution of political power among the states and not merely on some theory regarding the proper nature of representation,” Alito wrote. “It is impossible to draw any clear constitutional command from this complex history.”
Alito and Ginsburg both said the court had no need, in the context of this case, to settle the question of whether future state legislatures could exclude non-citizens and prisoners from their calculations. Thomas went further, stating that the state governments have this power.
“The Constitution does not prescribe any one basis for apportionment within states,” he wrote. “It instead leaves states significant leeway in apportioning their own districts to equalize total population, to equalize eligible voters, or to promote any other principle consistent with a republican form of government. The majority should recognize the futility of choosing only one of these options. The Constitution leaves the choice to the people alone — not to this court.”
