Baker v. Carr

Prior to this case, state legislatures weren't organized by populations.^[1]

In 1962, the less-populous rural America was over-represented in state legislatures all over the country.

In Colegrove v. Green, (1946), SCOTUS claimed that redistributing is a political question. SCOTUS won't decide on re-districting.

Baker was a voter in Tennessee. He sued Joe Carr, the Secretary of State for Tennessee ex officio.

Baker claimed that he as an urban voter wasn't equally represented in the state legislature; Baker claimed a violation of the equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment.

The district court dismissed the case as a political question.

Whether an equal protection challenge to mal-apportionment of state legislatures is a non-justiciable political question.

Re-districting is a justiciable issue for SCOTUS.

Apportionment cases can involve no federal constitutional right except one resting on the guaranty of a republican form of government, and complaints based on that clause have been held to present political questions which are non-justiciable.

"One person, one vote"

Issues involving political questions:

• a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department
• a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it
• the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly 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

Dissent:

The present case involves all the elements which have made the Guarantee Clause cases non-justiciable.