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Timestamp: 2019-04-19 18:21:59+00:00

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SANDERS, GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA, ET AL.
Appellants are citizens and qualified voters of Fulton County, Georgia, and as such are entitled to vote in congressional elections in Georgia's Fifth Congressional District. That district, one of ten created by a 1931 Georgia statute,*fn1 includes Fulton, DeKalb, and Rockdale Counties and has a population according to the 1960 census of 823,680. The average population of the ten districts is 394,312, less than half that of the Fifth. One district, the Ninth, has only 272,154 people, less than one-third as many as the Fifth. Since there is only one Congressman for each district, this inequality of population means that the Fifth District's Congressman has to represent from two to three times as many people as do Congressmen from some of the other Georgia districts.
Claiming that these population disparities deprived them and voters similarly situated of a right under the Federal Constitution to have their votes for Congressmen given the same weight as the votes of other Georgians, the appellants brought this action under 42 U. S. C. §§ 1983 and 1988 and 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3) asking that the Georgia statute be declared invalid and that the appellees, the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia, be enjoined from conducting elections under it. The complaint alleged that appellants were deprived of the full benefit of their right to vote, in violation of (1) Art. I, § 2, of the Constitution of the United States, which provides that "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States . . ."; (2) the Due Process, Equal Protection, and Privileges and Immunities Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment; and (3) that part of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers . . . ."
of congressional districts raised only "political" questions, which were not justiciable. Although the majority below said that the dismissal here was based on "want of equity" and not on nonjusticiability, they relied on no circumstances which were peculiar to the present case; instead, they adopted the language and reasoning of Mr. Justice Frankfurter's Colegrove opinion in concluding that the appellants had presented a wholly "political" question.*fn3 Judge Tuttle, disagreeing with the court's reliance on that opinion, dissented from the dismissal, though he would have denied an injunction at that time in order to give the Georgia Legislature ample opportunity to correct the "abuses" in the apportionment. He relied on Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, which, after full discussion of Colegrove and all the opinions in it, held that allegations of disparities of population in state legislative districts raise justiciable claims on which courts may grant relief. We noted probable jurisdiction. 374 U.S. 802. We agree with Judge Tuttle that in debasing the weight of appellants' votes the State has abridged the right to vote for members of Congress guaranteed them by the United States Constitution, that the District Court should have entered a declaratory judgment to that effect, and that it was therefore error to dismiss this suit. The question of what relief should be given we leave for further consideration and decision by the District Court in light of existing circumstances.
v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1. The right to vote is too important in our free society to be stripped of judicial protection by such an interpretation of Article I. This dismissal can no more be justified on the ground of "want of equity" than on the ground of "nonjusticiability." We therefore hold that the District Court erred in dismissing the complaint.
meant that, no matter what the mechanics of an election, whether statewide or by districts, it was population which was to be the basis of the House of Representatives.
The debates at the Convention make at least one fact abundantly clear: that when the delegates agreed that the House should represent "people" they intended that in allocating Congressmen the number assigned to each State should be determined solely by the number of the State's inhabitants.*fn30 The Constitution embodied Edmund Randolph's proposal for a periodic census to ensure "fair representation of the people,"*fn31 an idea endorsed by Mason as assuring that "numbers of inhabitants"
Readers surely could have fairly taken this to mean, "one person, one vote." Cf. Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 381.
Unfortunately I can join neither the opinion of the Court nor the dissent of my Brother HARLAN. It is true that the opening sentence of Art. I, § 2, of the Constitution provides that Representatives are to be chosen "by the People of the several States . . . ." However, in my view, Brother HARLAN has clearly demonstrated that both the historical background and language preclude a finding that Art. I, § 2, lays down the ipse dixit "one person, one vote" in congressional elections.
Court has so held ever since Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355 (1932), which is buttressed by two companion cases, Koenig v. Flynn, 285 U.S. 375 (1932), and Carroll v. Becker, 285 U.S. 380 (1932). A majority of the Court in Colegrove v. Green felt, upon the authority of Smiley, that the complaint presented a justiciable controversy not reserved exclusively to Congress. Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549, 564, and 568, n. 3 (1946). Again, in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 232 (1962), the opinion of the Court recognized that Smiley "settled the issue in favor of justiciability of questions of congressional redistricting." I therefore cannot agree with Brother HARLAN that the supervisory power granted to Congress under Art. I, § 4, is the exclusive remedy.
on the merits. At that hearing the court should apply the standards laid down in Baker v. Carr, supra.

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