Reynolds v. Sims

Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), argued 13 Nov. 1963, decided 15 June 1964 by vote of 8 to 1; Warren for the Court, Stewart and Clark concurring, Harlan in dissent. In June 1964, the Supreme Court handed down a group of decisions—collectively known as the Reapportionment Cases—that won immediate recognition as historical landmarks. In cases from six different states, the Court declared that representation in state legislatures must be based substantially on population. One week later, the Court handed down similar rulings (without opinions) for nine additional states. The controlling philosophy for all of these decisions is articulated in the Alabama case of Reynolds v. Sims, with the opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

The 1964 decisions marked the culmination of a two‐year period of accelerating litigation involving most states in the wake of the decision in Baker v. Carr (1962), which affirmed the justiciability of apportionment suits. While Baker furnished no guidelines for lower courts, most of them assertively fashioned decrees mandating more equipopulous legislative districts. In 1963, Gray v. Sanders had invalidated Georgia's county unit system and given currency to the phrase “one person, one vote.” Then, in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), the Supreme Court invalidated Georgia's grossly unequal congressional districts. While based on Article I rather than the Fourteenth Amendment, Wesberry articulated the fundamental constitutional principle of equal representation for equal numbers of people.

The Supreme Court's decisions in Reynolds and other 1964 apportionment cases were thus not entirely unexpected. Yet the sweeping nature of the rulings and their forthright language surprised many on both sides of the controversy. As a result of the decisions and their underlying rationale, at least one house in nearly all state legislatures was considered invalid, and both houses in most. The decision portended a vast institutional revolution.

The basis for the 1964 decisions was the holding that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause guarantees to each citizen an equal weight in the election of state legislators. Speaking for the Court, Warren declared, “Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests” (p. 562). The opinion went on to reason that any substantial disparity in the populations of legislative districts has the same effect as allotting a different number of votes to different individuals. Hence the Court regarded inequality of representation as a suffrage issue, citing various franchise cases that had invalidated the “dilution” or “debasement” of a citizen's fundamental right to vote.

The Court stated that mathematical exactness or precision is hardly a workable constitutional requirement and declined to suggest any numerical or percentage guidelines. Some deviations from an equal population plan in either or both houses of a state legislature would be constitutionally permissible “so long as the divergences from a strict equal population standard are based on legitimate considerations incident to the effectuation of a rational state policy” (p. 579). There could be some recognition of political subdivisions and community interests, but “population is, of necessity, the starting point for consideration and the controlling criterion for judgment in legislative apportionment controversies” (p. 567).

The Court specifically rejected the “federal analogy,” the contention that states may base one legislative house, as in the national Congress, on the equal representation of units of government rather than of people. The opinion dismissed as inapposite the suggested parallel between states in the federal union and local units such as counties or towns within a unitary state. The Court was persuaded by evidence that the original constitutions of nearly three‐fourths of the states provided that both legislative houses be based entirely or predominantly on population, with most recent support for the federal analogy merely a rationalization of malapportionment.

Dissenting in Reynolds as well as the remaining reapportionment cases, Justice John M. Harlan reiterated his view, expressed in Baker, that the judiciary was intruding needlessly and dangerously into the political process and that the subject matter was not suitable for the development of judicial standards. A detailed analysis of the history, drafting, language, and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment convinced Harlan that the Equal Protection Clause was not intended to inhibit states from choosing any democratic method desired in constructing legislative bodies. Thus the decisions, he felt, cut deeply into the fabric of American federalism. Cautioning against judicial activism to cure perceived social ills, Harlan declared, “The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare, nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements” (pp. 624–625).

The Supreme Court's choice of Reynolds as the lead reapportionment case in 1964 is understandable. Alabama's pattern of legislative representation was among the nation's most egregious departures from the concept of meaningful voter equality. Neither house reflected a population basis, with approximately one‐fourth of the state's voters theoretically in a position to elect majorities in both. Population variance ratios in the Alabama senate were 41 to 1; in the house, 16 to 1. Within a few months of the Baker decision, litigation brought swift action by a federal district court, the first judicially ordered apportionment in the nation. The court had fashioned what it considered the best of available legislative plans, drawn from a judicially prompted special session. The district court had ordered the plans into effect temporarily, pending further legislative and state constitutional action. The appeal from this judicial order became Reynolds v. Sims.

Although the Supreme Court decided Reynolds (and several other 1964 reapportionment cases) by an overwhelming vote of 8 to 1, the majority was split on the reasoning, best illustrated by its 6‐to‐3 decision invalidating Colorado's apportionment. The result of an initiative ballot measure overwhelmingly ratified in 1962 by a statewide popular vote that carried all counties, the new state constitutional amendment established a lower house based on population and a senate with population as a prime factor but modified by geographic considerations.

Invalidating this apportionment in Lucas v. the Forty‐Fourth General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the court relied on its newly expressed philosophy that legislatures must reflect the right of individuals to cast an equally weighted vote, a right that cannot be infringed by popular majorities. In response, Justice Potter Stewart's opinion (joined by Justice Tom C. Clark) rejected the position that the apportionment cases involved the right to vote or the “dilution” or “debasement” of that vote. The Stewart‐Clark approach held that the Equal Protection Clause permits states considerable latitude in designing legislative constituencies, provided only that (1) they are rational in the light of each state's own characteristics and needs and (2) they do not systematically prevent “ultimate effective majority rule.” Yet Stewart and Clark were unable to agree when applying these guidelines in some other cases.

The Supreme Court majority in Reynolds made its own attempt to reconcile the population principle and divergent state interests with various assurances that absolute uniformity was not mandated. While the same basic constitutional logic applied to all states, flexibility to accommodate diverse circumstances was indicated, with the expressed confidence that lower courts could work out specific and appropriate standards on a case‐by‐case basis.

Such optimism was not borne out by events. Lower courts tended to seek standards that could be applied to apportionment plans, usually in quantifiable ways. The most commonly accepted index was a population deviance range of plus‐15 to minus‐15 percent of the average population per district, a rule perhaps borrowed from a recommendation made by a committee of the American Political Science Association in 1951, long before judicial entry into apportionment disputes. Furthermore, acceptable ranges of population variances kept shrinking as courts handling apportionment disputes found it difficult to reject plaintiffs' alternative plans that were “more equal” in population.

In Kirkpatrick v. Preisler (1969), a Supreme Court majority of five, speaking through Justice William J. Brennan, set forth a new population standard requiring states to make a good‐faith effort to achieve precise mathematical equality among districts. While this and the companion case of Wells v. Rockefeller involved congressional districts, presumably controlled by Article I following Wesberry v. Sanders, the line between that and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause was increasingly blurred. The 1969 cases found the Court's majority, as well as the concurring and dissenting opinions, all citing Reynolds v. Sims.

In 1973, the Supreme Court shifted back to the more flexible guidelines of Reynolds to govern state redistricting. In Mahan v. Howell, Virginia's state legislative apportionment, with a total plus‐to‐minus variance of 16.4 percent, was upheld because state policy consistently followed town and county boundaries. In three subsequent decisions that term, the Court (1) upheld smaller variance ranges of under 10 percent (plus‐to‐minus) as de minimis, needing no state justification, and with the burden of proof shifting to plaintiffs; and (2) emphasized the far more narrow population range expected for congressional districts.

In Reynolds Warren had cautioned, “Indiscriminate districting, without any regard for political subdivision or natural or historical boundary lines, may be little more than an open invitation to partisan gerrymandering” (pp. 578–579). This warning was recalled by several observers who suggested that boundary manipulation had been encouraged by increasing judicial preoccupation with equipopulous districts at the expense of various territorial checks (compactness, contiguity, integrity of local boundaries).

Similar judicial concerns have been raised periodically since 1969. In Karcher v. Daggett (1983) the Court invalidated New Jersey's congressional districting because it lacked a good‐faith effort to achieve absolute population equality (the variance percentage from most‐ to least‐populous district was less than 0.7 percent). Five justices (one concurring, four dissenting) objected that partisan gerrymandering posed a greater threat to fair representation than minor population deviations.

The question whether claims of political gerrymandering were justiciable was answered affirmatively by the Supreme Court in Davis v. Bandemer (1986). But the Court's plurality opinion confined judicial scrutiny only to boundary manipulations that consistently degraded a voter's, or group of voters', influence on the political process as a whole. The plurality seemed loathe to sanction judicial interference in those instances of partisan advantage subject to correction by genuine electoral competition.

Few Supreme Court decisions have had the impact of Reynolds v. Sims. Within a period of scarcely two years, the constituency maps of virtually all state legislatures had changed, often dramatically. Patterns of rural and small‐town domination in several largely urban states had disappeared. Moreover, the principle of equal representation was soon extended to the local level of county boards and city councils.

In spite of this rapid restructuring, problems and litigation persisted. The question of how precisely equal in population districts must be led to mechanistic approaches maximizing equipopulous districts at the expense of other dimensions of representation and very likely encouraged the proliferation of sophisticated partisan gerrymandering. Ironically, as a result, events appeared to prod the Supreme Court to advance, step by step, further into the political thicket.

In Reynolds, Warren asserted that “the achieving of fair and effective representation for all citizens is concededly the basic aim of legislative apportionment” (pp. 565–566). That goal may be elusive and incapable of complete attainment, but it serves as a continuing challenge to courts and others.

See also Equal Protection; Fair Representation; Vote, Right to.

Bibliography

Gordon E. Baker , The Reapportionment Revolution (1966).
Richard C. Cortner , The Apportionment Cases (1970).
Robert G. Dixon, Jr. , Democratic Representation (1968).
Bernard Grofman, ed., Political Gerrymandering and the Courts (1990).

Gordon E. Baker