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Gaffney v. Cummings

Supreme Court of the United States · 1973 · Constitutional Law

Constitutional LawEqual ProtectionLegislative ReapportionmentPolitical Gerrymanderingone person one voteEqual Protection Clausestate legislative reapportionmentminor population deviations

Facts

After Connecticut's legislature and then a bipartisan commission failed to agree on reapportionment, a three-member bipartisan Apportionment Board adopted a plan for the General Assembly in 1971. The plan created 36 single-member Senate districts with a total maximum population deviation of 1.81% and 151 single-member House districts with a total maximum deviation of 7.83%; in drawing House districts, the Board cut 47 town boundaries. The Board openly pursued a policy of political fairness, seeking rough proportional representation for the Democratic and Republican Parties based on recent statewide election results. Plaintiffs challenged the plan, arguing that the Board pursued unnecessarily small deviations at the cost of excessive town splitting and that the plan was a political gerrymander with built-in partisan bias.

Issue

Whether Connecticut's legislative reapportionment plan created a prima facie Equal Protection violation because of its population deviations, and whether the plan was constitutionally invalid because it intentionally sought political fairness by approximating the statewide strength of the two major parties.

Rule

For state legislative reapportionment under the Fourteenth Amendment, districts must be as nearly equal in population as is practicable, but minor deviations from mathematical equality are insufficient by themselves to establish a prima facie case of invidious discrimination requiring state justification. Within tolerable population limits, a state may consider political factors and may seek to allocate legislative representation roughly in accordance with party voting strength, unless the plan invidiously minimizes or cancels out the voting strength of a racial or political group or fences such a group out of the political process.

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The legislature of Oregon adopts new single-member districts for its state house. The plan’s total maximum population deviation is 7.4%, and challengers prove only that a consultant’s alternative map would reduce the deviation to 3.1% while keeping the same number of districts.

Under the Equal Protection Clause, have the challengers most likely established a prima facie constitutional violation requiring Oregon to justify its plan?

Explanation. For state legislative reapportionment, the governing standard is not the strict congressional rule of near-absolute equality. Minor deviations from mathematical equality are insufficient by themselves to make out a prima facie Equal Protection violation. The Court also rejected the idea that litigation should begin merely because a challenger can produce a marginally better map. A total maximum deviation like 7.4%, without more, would not itself require state justification. (Derived from Gaffney v. Cummings (1973).)