''Baker v. Carr'', 369 U.S. 186 (1962), was a
landmark
A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances.
In modern use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures or f ...
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case in which the Court held that
redistricting
Redistribution (re-districting in the United States and in the Philippines) is the process by which electoral districts are added, removed, or otherwise changed. Redistribution is a form of boundary delimitation that changes electoral distri ...
qualifies as a
justiciable
Justiciability concerns the limits upon legal issues over which a court can exercise its judicial authority. It includes, but is not limited to, the legal concept of standing, which is used to determine if the party bringing the suit is a party ...
question under the
Fourteenth Amendment, thus enabling federal courts to hear Fourteenth Amendment-based redistricting cases. The court summarized its ''Baker'' holding in a later decision as follows: "Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits the authority of a State Legislature in designing the geographical districts from which representatives are chosen either for the State Legislature or for the Federal House of Representatives." (''
Gray v. Sanders'', ). The court had previously held in ''
Gomillion v. Lightfoot'' that districting claims over racial discrimination could be brought under the Fifteenth Amendment.
The case arose from a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee, which had not conducted redistricting since 1901. The state of Tennessee argued that the composition of legislative districts constituted a nonjusticiable
political question
In United States constitutional law, the political question doctrine holds that a constitutional dispute that requires knowledge of a non-legal character or the use of techniques not suitable for a court or explicitly assigned by the Constitution ...
, as the U.S. Supreme Court had held in ''
Colegrove v. Green'' (1946). In a majority opinion joined by five other justices, Associate Justice
William J. Brennan Jr. held that redistricting did not qualify as a political question, though he remanded the case to the federal district court for further proceedings. Associate Justice
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Austrian-American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judic ...
strongly dissented, arguing that the Court's decision cast aside history and judicial restraint and violated the separation of powers between legislatures and courts.
The case did not have any immediate effect on electoral districts, but it set an important precedent regarding the power of federal courts to address redistricting. In 1964, the Supreme Court would hand down two cases, ''
Wesberry v. Sanders'' and ''
Reynolds v. Sims'', which required the
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
and state legislatures to establish electoral districts of equal population on the principle of
one person, one vote
"One man, one vote", or "one person, one vote", expresses the principle that individuals should have equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of political equality to refer to such electoral reforms as universal suffrage, ...
.
Background
Plaintiff Charles Baker was a
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
who lived in
Shelby County, Tennessee
Shelby County is the westernmost county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 929,744. It is the largest of the state's 95 counties, both in terms of population and geographic area. Its county seat is Memp ...
, and had served as the mayor of
Millington, Tennessee
Millington is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and is a part of the Memphis metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 10,176. Millington was granted the title "Flag City Tennessee" by the Tennessee Stat ...
, near
Memphis
Memphis most commonly refers to:
* Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt
* Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city
Memphis may also refer to:
Places United States
* Memphis, Alabama
* Memphis, Florida
* Memphis, Indiana
* Memp ...
. The
Tennessee State Constitution
The Constitution of the State of Tennessee defines the form, structure, activities, character, and fundamental rules (and means for changing them) of the U.S. State of Tennessee.
The original constitution of Tennessee came into effect on June 1, ...
required that legislative districts for the
Tennessee General Assembly
The Tennessee General Assembly (TNGA) is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is a part-time bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Speaker of the Senate carries the additional title ...
be redrawn every ten years to provide for districts of substantially equal population (as was to be done for congressional districts). Baker's complaint was that Tennessee had not redistricted since 1901, in response to the
1900 census.
By the time of Baker's lawsuit, the population had shifted such that his district in Shelby County had about ten times as many residents as some of the
rural
In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are de ...
districts. The votes of rural citizens were overrepresented compared to those of urban citizens. Baker's argument was that this discrepancy was causing him to fail to receive the "equal protection of the laws" required by the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendant
Joe Carr
Joseph Benedict Carr (22 February 1922 – 3 June 2004) was an Irish amateur golfer.
Carr was born in Inchicore, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, to George and Margaret Mary "Missie" Waters (the fifth of seven children). At 10 days old, he was ado ...
was sued in his position as
Secretary of State for Tennessee. Carr was not the person who set the district lines – the state legislature had done that – but was sued ''
ex officio
An ''ex officio'' member is a member of a body (notably a board, committee, council) who is part of it by virtue of holding another office. The term '' ex officio'' is Latin, meaning literally 'from the office', and the sense intended is 'by right ...
'' as the person who was ultimately responsible for the conduct of elections in the state and for the publication of district maps.
The state of Tennessee argued that the composition of legislative districts was essentially a political question, not a judicial one, as had been held by ''
Colegrove v. Green'', a plurality opinion of the Court in which Justice
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Austrian-American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judic ...
declared that "Courts ought not to enter this political thicket." Frankfurter believed that relief for legislative
malapportionment
Apportionment is the process by which seats in a legislative body are distributed among administrative divisions, such as states or parties, entitled to representation. This page presents the general principles and issues related to apportionmen ...
had to be won through the political process.
Decision
The decision of ''Baker v. Carr'' was one of the most wrenching in the Court's history. The case had to be put over for reargument because in conference no clear majority emerged for either side of the case. Associate Justice
Charles Evans Whittaker
Charles Evans Whittaker (February 22, 1901 – November 26, 1973) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1957 to 1962. After working in private practice in Kansas City, Missouri, he was nominated for the United States Di ...
was so torn over the case that he eventually had to
recuse himself for health reasons. The arduous decisional process in ''Baker'' is often blamed for Whittaker's subsequent health problems, which forced him to retire from the Court in 1962.
The opinion was finally handed down in March 1962, nearly a year after it was initially argued. The Court split 6 to 2 in ruling that Baker's case was justiciable, producing, in addition to the opinion of the Court by Justice
William J. Brennan, three concurring opinions and two dissenting opinions. Brennan reformulated the political question doctrine, identifying six factors to help in determining which questions were "political" in nature. Cases that are political in nature are marked by:
# "Textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department;" as an example of this, Brennan cited issues of foreign affairs and executive war powers, arguing that cases involving such matters would be "political questions"
# "A lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it;"
# "The impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion;"
# "The impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government;"
# "An unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made;"
# "The potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question."
Justice
Tom C. Clark switched his vote at the last minute to a concurrence on the substance of Baker's claims, which would have enabled a majority which could have granted relief for Baker. Instead the Supreme Court remanded the case to the District Court.
The large majority in this case can in many ways be attributed to Justice Brennan, who convinced Potter Stewart that the case was a narrow ruling dealing only with the right to challenge the statute. Brennan also talked down Justices Black and Douglas from their usual absolutist positions to achieve a compromise.
Dissent by Justices Frankfurter and Harlan
Frankfurter, joined by Justice
John Marshall Harlan II
John Marshall Harlan (May 20, 1899 – December 29, 1971) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1955 to 1971. Harlan is usually called John Marshall Harlan II to distinguish him ...
, dissented vigorously and at length, arguing that the Court had cast aside history and judicial restraint, and violated the separation of powers between legislatures and Courts. He wrote:
Appellants invoke the right to vote and to have their votes counted. But they are permitted to vote and their votes are counted. They go to the polls, they cast their ballots, they send their representatives to the state councils. Their complaint is simply that the representatives are not sufficiently numerous or powerful.
Aftermath
Having declared
redistricting
Redistribution (re-districting in the United States and in the Philippines) is the process by which electoral districts are added, removed, or otherwise changed. Redistribution is a form of boundary delimitation that changes electoral distri ...
issues justiciable in ''Baker'', the court laid out a new test for evaluating such claims. The Court formulated the famous "
one person, one vote
"One man, one vote", or "one person, one vote", expresses the principle that individuals should have equal representation in voting. This slogan is used by advocates of political equality to refer to such electoral reforms as universal suffrage, ...
" standard under American jurisprudence for
legislative redistricting
Redistricting in the United States is the process of drawing electoral district boundaries. For the United States House of Representatives, and state legislatures, redistricting occurs after each decennial census.
The U.S. Constitution in Ar ...
, holding that each individual had to be weighted equally in legislative apportionment. This affected numerous state legislatures that had not redistricted congressional districts for decades, despite major population shifts. It also ultimately affected the composition of state legislative districts as well, which in Alabama and numerous other states had overrepresented rural districts and underrepresented urban districts with much greater populations.
This principle was formally enunciated in ''
Reynolds v. Sims'' (1964). The Court decided that in states with
bicameral legislatures
Bicameralism is a type of legislature, one divided into two separate assemblies, chambers, or houses, known as a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism is distinguished from unicameralism, in which all members deliberate and vote as a single gro ...
, as had Alabama, the state in this suit, both houses had to be apportioned on this standard. This voided the provision of the
Alabama Constitution
The Constitution of the State of Alabama is the basic governing document of the U.S. state of Alabama. It was adopted in 2022 and is Alabama's seventh constitution.
History
Alabama has had seven constitutions to date, all but the current one est ...
which had provided for two state senators from each county and similar provisions elsewhere. Similarly, the Tennessee Constitution had a provision that prevented counties from being split and portions of a county being attached to other counties or parts of counties in the creation of a legislative district. This was overridden under the principle of basing districts on population. Today counties are frequently split among districts in forming
Tennessee State Senate
The Tennessee Senate is the upper house of the U.S. state of Tennessee's state legislature, which is known formally as the Tennessee General Assembly.
The Tennessee Senate has the power to pass resolutions concerning essentially any issue reg ...
districts. "One person, one vote" was first applied as a standard for
Congressional districts. State legislatures were supposed to redistrict according to changes in population but many had not for decades.
''Baker v. Carr'' and subsequent cases fundamentally changed the nature of political representation in the United States, requiring not just
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...
but nearly every state to redistrict during the 1960s, often several times. This re-apportionment increased the political power of urban areas with greater population and reduced the influence of more rural areas. After he left the Court, Chief Justice
Earl Warren
Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitutio ...
called the ''Baker v. Carr'' line of cases the most important in his tenure as
Chief Justice.
[Schwartz, Bernard. ''How Justice Brennan Changed America, in Reason and Passio'' 33 (E. Joshua Rosenkranz and Bernard Schwartz eds., 1997).]
See also
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 369
This is a list of all the Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court cases from volume 369 of the ''United States Reports'':
External links
{{SCOTUSCases, 369
1962 in United States case law ...
* ''
Gomillion v. Lightfoot'',
364 U.S. 339 (1960), was a
landmark decision
Landmark court decisions, in present-day common law legal systems, establish precedents that determine a significant new legal principle or concept, or otherwise substantially affect the interpretation of existing law. "Leading case" is commonly ...
of the
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...
that found an electoral district with boundaries created to disenfranchise African Americans violated the
Fifteenth Amendment.
* ''
Colegrove v. Green,'' : Disparities in Congressional districts are non-judiciable. "The remedy for unfairness in districting is to secure State legislatures that will apportion properly, or to invoke the ample powers of Congress." (Illinois).
* ''Baker v. Carr'', : Overturning ''Colegrove;''
Redistricting
Redistribution (re-districting in the United States and in the Philippines) is the process by which electoral districts are added, removed, or otherwise changed. Redistribution is a form of boundary delimitation that changes electoral distri ...
qualifies as a
justiciable
Justiciability concerns the limits upon legal issues over which a court can exercise its judicial authority. It includes, but is not limited to, the legal concept of standing, which is used to determine if the party bringing the suit is a party ...
question. As summarized in ''Gray,'' the decision established that Equal Protection "...limits the authority of a State Legislature in designing the geographical districts from which representatives are chosen either for the State Legislature or for the Federal House of Representatives." (Tennessee).
Subsequent Cases Regarding Size/Proportionality:
* ''
Gray v. Sanders'', : "One person, one vote." Statewide elections (US Senator, Governor, etc.) must not employ a geographical-unit system that renders some votes greater than others because it "violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment" and that "...once a geographical unit for which a representative is to be chosen is designated, all who participate in the election must have an equal vote..." (Georgia).
*''
Wesberry v. Sanders'', :
Districts
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions ...
for
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
must be approximately equal in population as established by Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution. (Georgia).
* ''
Reynolds v. Sims'', : Districts for State Legislatures (''both'' chambers) must be approximately equal in population as established by Equal Protection. (Alabama).
*''
Gaffney v. Cummings'', : "Minor deviations from mathematical equality among state legislative districts," such as a deviation of 7.83%, are not ''automatically'' unconstitutional but rather allowable where there are legitimate State interests. (Connecticut).
*''
Karcher v. Daggett'', : The "equal representation" standard of Art. I, § 2, requires a "good faith" effort to ensure congressional districts be apportioned to achieve population equality. No such good faith was used for a ~1% deviation which is therefore unconstitutional. (New Jersey).
*''
Evenwel v. Abbott
''Evenwel v. Abbott'', 136 S. Ct. 1120 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the principle of one person, one vote, under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Consti ...
'', District drawn using
total population ('one person, one vote') are valid even when the result is wide deviation among
voting population (~40%). Ruling withheld as to whether states may alternatively draw district maps using eligible voters (rather than total population). (Texas).
Subsequent Cases Regarding Racial Composition:
*''
City of Mobile v. Bolden
''Mobile v. Bolden'', 446 U.S. 55 (1980), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that disproportionate effects alone, absent purposeful discrimination, are insufficient to establish a claim of racial discrimination affect ...
'', A municipal electoral system is constitutional if it does not have a discriminatory purpose, even if it has a discriminatory effect. (Alabama)
*''
Thornburg v. Gingles'', : Three preconditions required to find a redistricting plan violates VRA §2
(1) the minority group is "sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district," (2) is "politically cohesive" and (3) the "majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it
ousually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate." (North Carolina).
*''
Shaw v. Reno'', : Attempt to create an additional majority-minority Congressional district challenged and held invalid because Redistricting based on race must be held to a standard of strict scrutiny under the equal protection clause. (North Carolina).
*''
Miller v. Johnson'',
515
__NOTOC__
Year 515 ( DXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Florentius and Anthemius (or, less frequently, year 1268 ...
U.S. 900 (1995): Attempt to create an additional majority-minority Congressional district challenged held invalid because it required the creation of a "geographic monstrosity" thereby violating Equal Protection of the majority, Justice Department "maximization" policy not enough of a compelling governmental interest (Georgia).
* ''
Georgia v. Ashcroft'',
539
Year 539 ( DXXXIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Strategius without colleague (or, less frequently, year 1292 ' ...
U.S. 461 (2003): The District Court failed to consider all the relevant factors in evaluating 1997 State Senate districting plan - remanded for additional scrutiny (Georgia).
*''
Bartlett v. Strickland'', : "Cross-over" voters (members of a majority who tend to vote for the preferred candidate of the minority) should not be attributed to the minority group when calculating whether the minority constitutes a numerical majority of the voting-age population (relative to ''Gingles'' 1st criteria). (North Carolina).
*''
Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama,'' : Racial gerrymandering claims must be considered district-by-district, rather than by looking at the state as an undifferentiated whole. (Alabama).
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
*
''Baker v. Carr'' Case Brief Lawnix.com
"Supreme Court Landmark Case ''Baker v. Carr''"from
C-SPAN
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
's ''
Landmark Cases: Historic Supreme Court Decisions''
The Political Thicketa podcast episode on the case from
Radiolab
''Radiolab'' is a radio program produced by WNYC, a public radio station in New York City, and broadcast on public radio stations in the United States. The show is nationally syndicated and is available as a podcast. Live shows were first off ...
''More Perfect'',
WNYC Studios
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baker v. Carr
United States Constitution Article Three case law
United States Supreme Court cases of the Warren Court
United States electoral redistricting case law
United States One Person, One Vote Legal Doctrine
United States political question doctrine case law
Civil rights movement case law
African-American history of Tennessee
Legal history of Tennessee
Tennessee General Assembly
1962 in United States case law
United States Supreme Court cases