Alito's Disagreement With the "One Person, One Vote" Rulings
Fact Sheet - December 8, 2005
While applying for a promotion within the Department of Justice in 1985, Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel A. Alito wrote that he had been motivated by his opposition to, among other things, the Warren Court's rulings on legislative reapportionment. Because those rulings first articulated the fundamental civil rights principle of "one person, one vote," and paved the way for major strides in the effort to secure equal voting rights for all Americans, his opposition to them raises questions about his fitness to serve on the Supreme Court. Below is a summary of the Warren Court's decisions on reapportionment and why his rejection of them is so troubling.
Background
Prior to the 1960s, as urban areas throughout the country grew in population, many state and federal legislative districts were not redrawn, often leaving rural voters with more representation per capita - and thus far more political power - than urban residents. In Florida, for example, just 12 percent of the population could elect a majority of the state senate. While unequal districts affected all urban voters, their impact was especially harsh in Southern states where, along with discriminatory requirements like poll taxes and literacy tests, malapportionment virtually guaranteed that racial minorities would be excluded from meaningful participation in the democratic process. Before 1962, the federal courts refused to intervene.
The Warren Court's Major Reapportionment Rulings
Baker v. Carr (1962) broke new ground when the Supreme Court declared, for the first time, that the federal courts had a role to play in making sure that all Americans have a constitutional right to equal representation. The Baker case involved the state of Tennessee, in which - because state legislative districts had not been redrawn since 1900 - one urban district had ten times the population of other more rural districts. While the Court did not rule on whether the districts in question were unconstitutional, it did rule that reapportionment was an appropriate matter for judicial review.
Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) examined Congressional districts in the State of Georgia, which had drawn its legislative map so that 823,680 people in the Atlanta are were all represented by one Congressman, while a rural Congressman represented only 272,154 people. In finding that the disparities violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the Court noted that
"No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined."
Citing the principle of "one person, one vote" that had first been articulated just the year before in Gray v. Sanders (1963), the Court ordered the districts to be redrawn more evenly.
"While it may not be possible to draw Congressional districts with mathematical precision," the Court added, "that is no excuse for ignoring our Constitution's plain objective of making equal representation for equal numbers of people the fundamental goal."
Reynolds v. Sims (1964) applied the principle of "one person, one vote" to state legislatures, which, in many cases, had even more drastic malapportionment. Reynolds challenged Alabama's legislative districts: for example, one county with over 600,000 people had only one senator, while another county with only 15,417 people also had its own senator. Equally egregious examples, however, could be found nationwide:
- In Connecticut, one House district had 191 people, while another had 81,000.
- In New Hampshire, a township with only 3 people had a state assemblyman, while another district had a population of over 3,000.
- In Utah, one district had 164 people, while the largest had 32,280.
Relying on its earlier decisions, the Court once again ordered Alabama's districts to be redrawn. It only required, however, that states make "an honest and good faith effort to construct districts, in both houses of its legislature, as nearly of equal population as is practicable."
The Significance of the "Reapportionment Revolution" - Why Was Alito Troubled by it?
After Chief Justice Earl Warren retired from the Supreme Court, he said that the Baker, Wesberry and Reynolds decisions were the most important line of cases he ever handled during his tenure on the Court. In articulating and applying the concept of "one person, one vote," the cases equalized political power between urban and rural voters, and ensured that every citizen would have an equal voice in the legislative process.
Along with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its subsequent amendments, the decisions also paved the way to far greater representation of racial and ethnic minorities, at both the state and federal levels of government. They also helped open the door for legal challenges to the "at-large" and "multi-member" districts that many Southern states established in an effort to circumvent the Baker rulings and continue excluding African American voters from the political process.
It is true that when the cases were first decided, there were principled disagreements, even among strong supporters of equal voting rights, over whether the Court had been right to intervene in what some called the "political thicket" of legislative reapportionment. In the Kennedy Administration, for example, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Solicitor General Archibald Cox were at odds over the decision. But most of the initial opposition to the rulings quickly evaporated, and within several years the cases became so ingrained in our constitutional law that they could fairly be described as "superprecedent."
The Warren Court decisions that established the constitutional principle of "one person, one vote" were a catalyst for tremendous progress in our nation's efforts to secure equal voting rights for all Americans. It is very disturbing that two decades later, long after most of the nation had come to embrace this progress, Judge Alito still boasted of his opposition to it.
