WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that states may satisfy "one person, one vote" rules by drawing legislative districts based on total population of a place, a defeat for conservative interests who wanted the districts based only on voting-age populations.
The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, was considered to be one of biggest on voting rights this term, and a decision the other way would have shifted political power away from urban areas, where Democrats usually dominate, and toward more Republican-friendly rural areas.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority decision.
"As history, precedent, and practice demonstrate, it is plainly permissible for jurisdictions to measure equalization by the total population of state and local legislative districts," she wrote. She was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed with the outcome but filed separate concurrences.
Currently, all states - with some minor variations - use total population for redistricting, and it is required for congressional districts. The general population contains millions of people who aren't eligible to vote: children, legal and undocumented immigrants, prisoners, and those who are disenfranchised. Except for prisoners, they are largely concentrated in urban areas.
The court did not rule on a separate question: whether it would be constitutional for states to use the voter-eligible population for reapportionment if they chose to do so. The Obama administration argued that it would not be constitutional.
The majority said it was not necessary to make that decision to decide the specific challenge, which was brought by a conservative legal organization representing voters who objected to the way Texas created legislative districts.
The group that brought the challenge, the Project on Fair Representation, expressed disappointment that the justices "were unwilling to reestablish the original principle of one-person, one vote for the citizens of Texas and elsewhere."
Its founder, Edward Blum, said: "The issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away. Some Supreme Court cases grow in importance over time, and Evenwel v. Abbott may likely be one of those cases."
Others said the court was recognizing what most had always thought was the correct way to interpret the court's 1962 ruling in Baker v. Carr, which set the stage for what became known as the one-person, one-vote principle.
Kathay Feng, director of redistricting for Common Cause, said in a statemnt that her organization "joined cities and counties across the country - from Los Angeles, Calif., to South Bend, Ind., to Atlanta, Ga. - to argue that everyone - young, old, city-dwellers and small town residents - deserves equal representation when it comes to providing police, fire, schools, and other services."
Ginsburg struck a similar note. "Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates - children, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system - and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies," she wrote.
"By ensuring that each representative is subject to requests and suggestions from the same number of constituents, total population apportionment promotes equitable and effective representation," Ginsburg wrote.
While acknowledging the Constitution left the question open, Ginsburg said the document and the Founding Fathers provided guidance for using total population. That is where Thomas and Alito departed from the majority.
For starters, Thomas said, the court "has never provided a sound basis for the one-person, one-vote principle." He said the court has become too involved in how states create districts.
The Constitution, Thomas wrote, "leaves states significant leeway in apportioning their own districts to equalize total population, to equalize eligible voters, or to promote any other principle consistent with a republican form of government."
Alito also said the majority was reading too much into history. He said the issue is not completely settled by Monday's decision.
"Whether a state is permitted to use some measure other than total population is an important and sensitive question that we can consider if and when we have before us a state districting plan that, unlike the current Texas plan, uses something other than total population as the basis for equalizing the size of districts," Alito wrote.