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 lesspopulated 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 precedents, 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 discoverable 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,