Opinion ID: 2656849
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Standing in Apportionment Cases

Text: To demonstrate constitutional standing, a plaintiff must show (1) an “injury in fact” that is (a) “concrete and particularized” and (b) “actual and imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical”; (2) that the injury is “fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant”; and (3) that it is “likely,” rather than speculative, “that a favorable judicial decision will prevent or redress the injury.” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 493 (2009) (quotation marks omitted); Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. 9 Laidlaw Envtl. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180-81 (2000). These requirements, including the need to demonstrate “injury in fact,” are no less applicable in the apportionment context. Although all those in a covered district are impacted by malapportionment, not everyone is injured. Indeed, as Reynolds makes plain, the detrimental effect of malapportionment is not simply a generalized harm to the polity. Malapportionment’s harm is felt by individuals in overpopulated districts who actually suffer a diminution in the efficacy of their votes and their proportional voice in the legislature. See, e.g., Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 561-63 (framing uneven districting as a form of “invidious discrimination” based on geographic location that abridges the voting rights of individuals in “disfavored areas,” because “[o]verweighting and overvaluation of the votes of those living here has the certain effect of dilution and undervaluation of the votes of those living there”). To challenge a state’s apportionment scheme, therefore, an individual must belong to the injured class of people whose votes and representational voice receive less than their fair share. See Fairley v. Patterson, 493 F.2d 598, 603-04 (5th Cir. 1974) (relying on the Supreme Court’s holding in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 206-08 (1962), that underrepresentation in a plan of apportionment is an injury sufficient to confer standing); accord Wright v. Dougherty Cnty., 358 F.3d 1352, 1355 (11th Cir. 2004) (per curiam); League of Women Voters v. Nassau Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 737 F.2d 155, 161-62 (2d Cir. 1984); Skolnick v. Bd. of Comm’rs, 435 F.2d 361, 363-64 (7th Cir. 1970). Moreover, a voter who has not been injured lacks standing to sue on behalf of individuals who are 10 actually injured by a plan of apportionment. See Wright, 358 F.3d at 1355.