Justices weigh meaning of ‘one person, one vote’

Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission in 2008 to the University of Texas at Austin, will face the Supreme Court again to argue the university’s admission policy was unconstitutional. And that principle, the court has said, requires states to draw legislative districts of substantially equal population. Tuesday, justices dealt with something they’ve never explicitly answered: whether the doctrine applies to the general population or the voting population.

Although the Latino electorate is increasing (Latinos over the age of 18 will comprise 16 percent of the US adult population in 2016), the legislative process based only on voter eligible population would absolutely disenfranchise children, residents who are not citizens and undocumented immigrants among others.

For decades, state legislative districts have been designed roughly equal in population. Texas’ practice of counting total population is a common measure used by most states, and one the state is fighting to keep.

The challenge to the Texas redistricting has been coordinated by conservative activist Edward Blum.

She argued that a University of Texas affirmative-action policy unconstitutionally favored blacks and Hispanics.

Ultimately, if the Supreme Court agrees that district lines should be drawn according to the number of eligible voters, Republicans would benefit and Democrats would lose. “I think it’s appropriate that he be defending the one person, one vote principle”. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke, followed by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “The problem is that what you’re forgetting is the dual interest”, she said.

“We have a long way to go to be as diverse as we need to be as a public land-grant university that looks like the people we serve”, said Douglas Zander, admissions director at the University of Delaware.

Consovoy replied that “tradition doesn’t trump the individual rights of a voter…” They are represented by the Project on Fair Representation, which two years ago persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“The communities in which [children] live must receive adequate representation to address their unique needs”, the brief says.

During arguments Wednesday, several justices asked about the value of ordering more hearings in a case from Texas that was before them for the second time.

Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller said such an outcome could only be achieved at the expense of other traditional requirements about redistricting, including relatively compact districts that don’t split counties.

Consovoy responded that if “tradition were the rule”, the court’s landmark “one person, one vote” cases would have come out the other way.

In 2001, the Supreme Court turned down an opportunity to decide the question, in another case from Texas. “Why can’t you have both?” “The pre-clearance process at the Department of Justice is famously opaque”, Chief Justice John Roberts stated in reference to the supply his ruling eviscerated in 2013.

And, today, the justices examined both the theory, the meaning of one person, one vote, as well as the practical consequences of a shift from what the states have been doing for half-a-century to just using voter eligible population. Justice Antonin Scalia, another conservative who is normally an active participant at oral arguments, asked no questions.

Civil rights leaders and minority groups back maintaining the status quo.

“This case is an affront to our democracy”, he later said in a statement.

The Constitution requires that U.S. House seats be apportioned based on population, he noted.

At issue before the court was the basic question of who gets counted when election districts are drawn: Is it all people, including children, prisoners and immigrants who are not eligible to vote? She notes, for instance, that her mainly rural district has 584,000 citizens eligible to vote, while a neighboring rural district, equal in total population, has only 372,000 eligible voters.

The challengers to the Texas Senate map cite a 1970 Supreme Court decision-Hadley v. Junior College District of Metropolitan Kansas City-that struck down the voting system for a junior college district in Kansas City, Mo.