Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission , the Supreme Court sided with the commission and voters. Many more states, however, do not have independent redistricting commissions and the question of partisan gerrymandering is often raised. Gerrymandering is the act of redrawing political boundaries to favor one party over another and can be a significant concern when incumbents are tasked with drawing their own districts. This was the question before the Court in Davis v. The Supreme Court decided two key points: the justiciability of gerrymandering claims and the standard by which to judge such claims.
Beginning with justiciability, the Court held that partisan gerrymandering claims were justiciable because there were salient questions of law, not politics alone. However, Justice White in his majority opinion, added the caveat that those challenging redistricting plans on these grounds had to demonstrate the intent to discriminate on the part of the line-drawers. Simply showing discriminatory effect would not be enough to meet this standard. From Bandemer to when the Court decided Vieth v.
Jubelirer a period of nearly 20 years , no petitioner was able to demonstrate discriminatory intent in the way Bandemer required. Similarly, no lower court was able to create a manageable alternative standard.
It was with this discourse on precedent that the Court heard arguments for Jubelirer. Following the census, Pennsylvania was set to lose two Congressional seats. The Republican party the majority party in the legislature adopted redrawn lines which would clearly benefit Republican incumbents. A plurality of the Court a split decision with no majority opinion held that such partisan gerrymandering claims were not justiciable — overturning the Bandemer standard.
Four justices justified their decision on the inability of the 14th Amendment to address questions of partisan gerrymandering, but Kennedy argued that partisan claims could potentially be brought forward under the First Amendment.
Redrawing district lines inherently involves questions of population, party affiliation, race, and responsibility so redistricting cases will continue to make their way before the Supreme Court.
For the majority of states, lines are redrawn by their respective state legislatures. In fact, only 16 states use independent, nonpartisan commissions — of the type in question in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission — for redistricting. California is one such state. In , California voters approved Proposition 11 the Voters First Act which established a redistricting commission comprised of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four non-party-affiliated individuals.
The California Citizens Redistricting Commission was responsible for drawing the lines following the Census. The number of states relying on commissions may grow this November, with states like Virginia and local governments like Monroe County in New York voting on amendments to require the use of an independent redistricting commission.
However, independent commissions are not a one size fits all model. Ohio, for example, utilizes an independent commission but requires a three-fifths majority vote in the legislature with support from at least half of the minority party for a new map to pass.
Some states have also opted to not use independent commissions and find other ways to reduce partisanship in the process. Most recently, the Court heard the landmark case Rucho v. Common Cause and released an equally landmark decision in The district court enjoined the use of the map after November , but its decision was quickly appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Court not only was set to consider if the map constituted a partisan gerrymander, but also whether the plaintiffs had standing and whether the claim was judiciable at all. The Court only had to answer one of these three questions. In a decision, the Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering is a political question that cannot be considered by courts and is thus nonjusticiable.
Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission. Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. In the present suit the complaint attacked the State Apportionment Act on the ground that it among other things violates Article One and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. They further assert that this reduction of the effectiveness of their vote also violates the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in abridging their privilege as citizens of the United States to vote for Congressmen, a privilege guaranteed by Article One of the Constitution.
They further contend that the State Apportionment Act directly violates Article One which guarantees that each citizen eligible to vote has a right to vote for Congressmen and to have his vote counted.
The assertion here is that the right to have their vote counted is abridged unless that vote is given approximately equal weight to that of other citizens. It is my judgment that the District Court had jurisdiction; 2 that the complaint presented a justiciable case and controversy, 3 and that petitioners had standing to sue, since the facts alleged show that they have been injured as individuals. Under these circumstances, and since there is no adequate legal remedy for depriving a citizen of his right to vote, equity can and should grant relief.
It is difficult for me to see why the State Apportionment Act does not deny petitioners equal protection of the laws. The failure of the Legislature to reapportion the Congressional election districts for forty years, despite census figures indicating great changes in the distribution of the population, has resulted in election districts the populations of which range from , to , One of the petitioners lives in a district of more than , people.
His vote is consequently much less effective than that of each of the citizens living in the district of , And such a gross inequality in the voting power of citizens irrefutably demonstrates a complete lack of effort to make an equitable apportionment. The State Apportionment Act if applied to the next election would thus result in a wholly indefensible discrimination against petitioners and all other voters in heavily populated districts. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids such discrimination.
It does not permit the states to pick out certain qualified citizens or groups of citizens and deny them the right to vote at all. See Nixon v. Condon, U. No one would deny that the equal protection clause would also prohibit a law that would expressly give certain citizens a half-vote and others a full vote. The probable effect of the State Apportionment Act in the coming election will be that certain citizens, and among them the petitioners, will in some instances have votes only one-ninth as effective in choosing representatives to Congress as the votes of other citizens.
Such discriminatory legislation seems to me exactly the kind that the equal protection clause was intended to prohibit. Ex parte Yarbrough, U. Mosley, U. United States v. Classic, U. While the Constitution contains no express provision requiring that Congressional election districts established by the states must contain approximately equal populations, the Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote and the right to have one's vote counted clearly imply the policy that state election systems, no matter what their form, should be designed to give approximately equal weight to each vote cast.
The policy behind it is broader than that. It is true that the States are authorized by Section 2 of Article One of the Constitution to legislate on the subject of Congressional elections to the extent that Congress has not done so. Thus the power granted to the State Legislature on this subject is primarily derived from the Federal and not from the State Constitution.
But this federally-granted power with respect to elections of Congressmen is not to formulate policy but rather to implement the policy laid down in the Constitution, that, so far as feasible, votes by given equally effective weight. Thus, a state legislature cannot deny eligible voters the right to vote for Congressmen and the right to have their vote counted. Texas, U. See also Lane v. Had Illinois passed an Act requiring that all of its twenty-four Congressmen be elected by the citizens of one county, it would clearly have amounted to a denial to the citizens of the other counties of their Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.
And I cannot imagine that an Act that would have apportioned twenty-three Congressmen to the State's smallest county and one Congressman to all the others, would have been sustained by any Court. The Apportionment Act here involved violates that policy in the same way.
Here the legislature of Illinois has not done so. Whether that was due to negligence or was a wilful effort to deprive some citizens of an effective vote, the admitted result is that the Constitutional policy of equality of representation has been defeated.
Under these circumstances it is the Court's duty to invalidate the state law. It is contended, however, that a court of equity does not have the power, or even if it has the power, that it should not exercise it in this case. There have been cases, such as Coleman v. Miller, supra, U. In the Miller case, however, the question involved was ratification of a Constitutional amendment, a matter over which the Court believed Congress had been given final authority.
To have decided that question would have amounted to a trespass upon the Constitutional power of Congress. Here we have before us a state law which abridges the Constitutional rights of citizens to cast votes in such way as to obtain the kind of Congressional representation the Constitution guarantees to them. Wood v. As we said with reference to that decision in Lane v.
Furthermore, the author of the Giles v. Harris opinion also wrote the opinion in Nixon v. Herndon, in which a voter's right to cast a ballot was held to give rise to a justiciable controversy. In this case, no supervision over elections is asked for. What is asked is that this Court do exactly what it did in Smiley v. Holm, supra. It is asked to declare a state apportionment bill invalid and to enjoin state officials from enforcing it.
The only difference between this case and the Smiley case is that there the case originated in the State Courts while here the proceeding originated in the Federal District Court. This is not that type of question. What is involved here is the right to vote guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. It has always been the rule that where a federally protected right has been invaded the federal courts will provide the remedy to rectify the wrong done. Federal courts have not hesitated to exercise their equity power in cases involving deprivation of property and liberty.
Ex parte Young, supra; Hague v. How are senators who are elected at the same time ranked in the chronological list of senators? To date, 16 senators have also served as president of the United States. Three senators, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama moved directly from the U. Senate to the White House. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Why was the reapportionment Act of passed quizlet?
Ben Davis May 29, Why was the reapportionment Act of passed quizlet? What was the purpose of the reapportionment Act of ? The priority list rankings are calculated by taking each state's apportionment population from the most recent census, and multiplying it by a series of values.
The multipliers used are the reciprocals of the geometric means between every pair of consecutive whole numbers, with those whole numbers representing House seats to be apportioned.
See the Appendix for additional information on the method of equal proportions and other methods proposed or used in previous apportionments. The President then transmits a statement to Congress showing 1 "the whole number of persons in each State," as determined by the decennial census and certain administrative records; and 2 the resulting number of Representatives each state would be entitled to under an apportionment, given the existing number of Representatives and using the method of equal proportions.
The President submits this statement to Congress within the first week of the first regular session of the next Congress typically, early January of a year ending in "1". Each state receives the number of Representatives noted in the President's statement for its House delegation, beginning at the start of the next session of Congress typically, early January of a year ending in "3".
States may then engage in their own redistricting processes, which vary based on state laws. Federal law contains requirements for how apportionment changes will apply to states in the event that any congressional elections occur between a reapportionment and the completion of a state's redistricting process.
In these instances, states with the same number of House seats would use the existing congressional districts to elect Representatives; states with more seats than districts would elect a Representative for the "new" seat through an at-large election and use existing districts for the other seats; and states with fewer seats than districts would elect all Representatives through an at-large election. Congressional redistricting involves creating or redrawing geographic boundaries for U.
House districts within a state. Redistricting procedures are largely determined by state law and vary across states, but states must comply with certain parameters established by federal statute and court decisions. In general, there is variation among states regarding the practice of drawing districts and which decisionmakers are involved in the process. Across states, there are some common standards and criteria for districts, some of which reflect values that are commonly thought of as traditional districting practices.
Districting criteria may result either from shared expectations and precedent regarding what districts should be like, or they may result from certain standards established by current federal statute and court decisions. These criteria typically reflect a goal of enabling "fair" representation for all residents, rather than allowing arbitrary, or discriminatory, map lines.
Redistricting efforts intended to unfairly favor one group's interests over another's are commonly referred to as gerrymandering.
Packing describes district boundaries that are drawn to concentrate individuals who are thought to share similar voting behaviors into certain districts.
Concentrating prospective voters with shared preferences can result in a large number of "wasted votes" for these districts, as their Representatives will often be elected by a supermajority that far exceeds the number of votes required for a candidate to win. Cracking may be thought of as the opposite of packing, and occurs when individuals who are thought to share similar voting preferences are deliberately dispersed across a number of districts.
This approach dilutes the voting strength of a group and can prevent its preferred candidates from receiving a majority of the vote in any district. For some states, redistricting following an apportionment may be necessary to account for House seats gained or lost based on the most recent census population count.
Some states might make additional changes to district boundaries in the years following an initial redistricting; in some instances, such changes are required by legal decisions finding that the initial districts were improperly drawn. From time to time, Congress considers legislation that would affect apportionment and redistricting processes.
The Constitution requires the apportionment of House seats across states based on population size, but it does not specify how those seats are to be distributed within each state. Most redistricting practices are determined by state constitutions or statutes, although some parts of the redistricting process are affected by federal statute or judicial interpretations.
The current system of single-member districts rather than a general ticket system, where voters could select a slate of Representatives for an entire state is provided by 2 U. For example, in the s and early s, some federal apportionment statutes included other standards for congressional districts, such as population equality or geographic compactness.
Many of the other federal parameters for congressional redistricting have resulted from judicial decisions. One area of redistricting addressed by federal standards is population equality across districts. Legislative provisions, requiring that congressional districts "[contain] as nearly as practicable an equal number of inhabitants," were found in federal apportionment acts between and Supreme Court has also addressed population size variance among congressional districts within a state, or malapportionment.
Under what is known as the "equality standard" or "one person, one vote" principle, the Court has found congressional districts within a state should be drawn to approximately equal population sizes. These equal population standards apply only to districts within a state, not to districts across states. To illustrate how district population sizes can vary across states, Table 3 provides Census Bureau estimates from to for the average district population size nationwide, as well as estimates for which states had the largest and smallest average district population sizes.
Wide variations in state populations and the U. Constitution's requirement of at least one House seat per state make it difficult to ensure equal district sizes across states, particularly if the size of the House is fixed.
Census, in order to account for the sizable population shifts that can occur within a year span. Table 3. Summary of Average U. House District Population Sizes, State had a single House district during the noted apportionment year. To assist states in drawing districts that have equal population sizes, the Census Bureau provides population tabulations for certain geographic areas identified by state officials, if requested, under the Census Redistricting Data Program, created by P.
Under the program, the Census Bureau is required to provide total population counts for small geographic areas; in practice, the Bureau also typically provides additional demographic information, such as race, ethnicity, and voting age population, to states.
One key statutory requirement for congressional districts comes from Section 2 of the VRA, as amended, which prohibits states or their political subdivisions from imposing any voting qualification, practice, or procedure that results in denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race, color, or membership in a language minority.
In addition to requirements of population equality and compliance with the VRA, several other redistricting criteria are common across many states today, including compactness, contiguity, and observing political boundaries.
These factors are sometimes referred to as traditional districting principles and are often related to geography. The placement of district boundaries, for example, might reflect natural features of the state's land; how the population is distributed across a certain land area; and efforts to preserve existing subdivisions or communities such as town boundaries or neighborhood areas.
Redistricting laws in many states currently include such criteria, but they are not explicitly addressed in current federal statute. Previous federal apportionment statutes, however, sometimes contained similar provisions. Table 4. Additional information may be available from individual states.
See the following text sections for an explanation of the criteria used as column headings in this table. Notes: States excluded from this table do not specify any of these criteria for congressional redistricting.
As a districting criterion, compactness reflects the idea that a congressional district should represent a geographically consolidated area. In some conceptualizations, a compact district would have an identifiable "center" that seems reasonably equidistant from any of its boundaries.
Federal apportionment acts between and contained a provision requiring that congressional districts be of "contiguous territory," 49 and most states have included similar language in their current redistricting laws. For a district to be contiguous, it generally must be possible to travel from any point in the district to any other place in the district without crossing into a different district.
Most states require that redistricting practitioners take into account existing political boundaries, such as towns, cities, or counties. In many instances, districts may not be able to be drawn in ways that encompass entire political subdivisions, given other districting standards, like population equality, that could take precedence. Maintaining political subdivisions can also help simplify election administration by ensuring that a local election jurisdiction is not split among multiple congressional districts.
Some state laws direct redistricting authorities to preserve the "core" of existing congressional districts; other states prohibit drawing district boundaries that would create electoral contests between incumbent House Members. Some states include the preservation of communities of interest as a criterion in their redistricting laws. People within a community of interest generally have a shared background or common interests that may be relevant to their legislative representation.
These recognized similarities may be due to shared social, cultural, historical, racial, ethnic, partisan, or economic factors. In some instances, communities of interest may naturally be preserved by following other redistricting criteria, such as compactness or preserving political subdivisions.
Some states include measures providing that districts cannot be drawn to unduly favor a particular candidate or political party. The term gerrymander originated to describe districts drawn to favor a particular political party, 53 and it is often used in this context today. Redistricting has traditionally been viewed as an inherently political process, where authorities have used partisan considerations in drawing district boundaries.
Districts generally may be drawn in a way that is politically advantageous to certain candidates or political parties, unless prohibited by state law. Redistricting processes are fundamentally the responsibility of state governments under current law and practice.
Among the 43 states with multiple House districts, a variety of approaches are taken, but generally, states either allow their state legislatures or a separate redistricting commission to determine congressional district boundaries.
The map in Figure 3 displays the redistricting methods currently used across states. Figure 3. State Redistricting Methods. Notes: Iowa has nonpartisan legislative staff create its redistricting maps but requires legislative approval to enact them. Montana would use a redistricting commission if it receives an additional House seat.
Historically, and in the majority of states today, congressional district boundaries are primarily determined by state legislatures. Currently, 37 states authorize their state legislatures to establish congressional district boundaries.
Most of these states enable the governor to veto a redistricting plan created by the legislature; Connecticut and North Carolina do not allow a gubernatorial veto. Other states, in recent years, have begun to use redistricting commissions, which may be more removed from state legislative politics.
In five other states Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, and Virginia , a commission serves in an advisory capacity during the redistricting process. Commissions may also be used as a "backup" or alternate means of redistricting if the legislature's plan is not enacted, such as in Connecticut, Indiana, and Ohio. The composition of congressional redistricting commissions can also vary; many include members of the public selected by a method intended to be nonpartisan or bipartisan, whereas other commissions may include political appointees or elected officials, such as in Hawaii and New Jersey.
A commission's membership, the authority granted to it, its relationship to other state government entities, and other features may affect whether a commission is perceived to be undertaking an objective process or a more politicized one.
Some proponents of redistricting commissions believe that using independent redistricting commissions can prevent opportunities for partisan gerrymandering and may create more competitive and representative districts.
The timeline for redistricting also varies across states, and can be affected by state or federal requirements regarding the redistricting process; the efficiency of the legislature, commission, or other entities involved in drawing a state's districts; and, potentially, by legal or political challenges made to a drafted or enacted redistricting plan.
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