Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-422_9ol1.pdf
Page Number: 16.0

Cite as:  588 U. S. ____ (2019) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

have been reasonably modified and disposed: that it must 
either have been lodged wholly in the national legislature,
or  wholly  in  the  State  legislatures,  or  primarily  in  the
latter,  and  ultimately  in  the  former.”    The  Federalist  No. 
59, p. 362 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961).  At no point was there a
suggestion that the federal courts had a role to play.  Nor 
was there any indication that the Framers had ever heard 
of courts doing such a thing. 

C 

Courts  have  nevertheless  been  called  upon  to  resolve  a 
variety  of  questions  surrounding  districting.    Early  on, 
doubts  were  raised  about  the  competence  of  the  federal
courts to resolve those questions.  See Wood v. Broom, 287 
U. S. 1 (1932); Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549 (1946). 

In the leading case of Baker v. Carr, voters in Tennessee 
complained  that  the  State’s  districting  plan  for  state 
representatives  “debase[d]”  their  votes,  because  the  plan
was  predicated  on  a  60-year-old  census  that  no  longer
reflected  the  distribution  of  population  in  the  State.    The 
plaintiffs  argued  that  votes  of  people  in  overpopulated 
districts  held  less  value  than  those  of  people  in  less-
populated  districts,  and  that  this  inequality  violated  the 
Equal  Protection  Clause  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment.
The District Court dismissed the action on the ground that 
the claim was not justiciable, relying on this Court’s prec-
edents,  including  Colegrove.    Baker  v.  Carr,  179  F. Supp. 
824,  825,  826  (MD  Tenn.  1959).  This  Court  reversed.  It 
identified  various  considerations  relevant  to  determining
whether  a  claim  is  a  nonjusticiable  political  question,
including  whether  there  is  “a  lack  of  judicially  discover-
able and manageable standards for resolving it.”  369 U. S., 
at  217.  The  Court  concluded  that  the  claim  of  population 
inequality  among  districts  did  not  fall  into  that  category,
because  such  a  claim  could  be  decided  under  basic  equal
protection principles.  Id., at 226.  In Wesberry v. Sanders,