Supreme Court considers 'one person, one vote' case

You’d think the government would have this figured out by now. The law says each state legislative district must have roughly the same population as all the others. Most states follow the law this way: Based on the census, they divide the total population by the number of legislative seats allowed and draw districts equally.

But some lawmakers disagree on definitions of words such as “population.” Should that number include people who are not citizens? What about people in the United States illegally?

Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the principle of “one person, one vote” is part of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The issue now is whether that means voterequality or districtequality.

Texans Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger argue eligible voters should be counted to figure the number of representatives in the state legislature. Evenwel and Pfenninger live in a mostly rural area outside Houston. The state drew their district to match the number of Houston residents.

But the city of Houston has far fewer eligible voters than residents. That’s partly due to the number of illegal immigrants in the city, as well as more felons and lots more children, who are still counted toward the number of representatives their area receives. Some districts have a 50-percent difference in the number of eligible voters, compared to other districts.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said there’s a good reason nonvoters are counted: “There is a voting interest, but there is also a representation interest. And it’s that which has led us to accept the total population base because states have to have some discretion to figure out who should be having the representational voice.”

Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller and the federal government’s lawyer, Ian Gershengorn, argued states have always been allowed to structure elections however they want. But Gershengorn wanted a limit on that, pointing to federal redistricting rules: “We disagree that the court should go on to decide that Texas is free in the future to redistrict on the basis of some measure of … voter population if it so chooses.” He said it would be odd for the federal government to forbid for state legislative redistricting what it requires for congressional redistricting.

The eventual ruling, expected by the end of June, has huge implications, perhaps shifting electoral power to more rural areas that often feel overshadowed by urban concerns, fueling fears of minorities who feel overlooked.

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