Baker v.

Carr
[369 U.S. 186]
Warren Court, Decided 6-2, 3/26/1962

In the State legislature of Tennessee, representation was determined by a 1901 law setting the number of legislators for
each county. Urban areas, which had grown greatly in population since 1901, were underrepresented. Mayor Baker of
Nashville brought suit, saying that the apportionment denied voters of urban areas equal protection of the law as
guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The federal court refused to enter the political thicket of State districting, and the
case was appealed to the Supreme Court.
In the State legislature of Tennessee, representation was determined by a 1901 law setting the number of legislators for
each county. Urban areas, which had grown greatly in population since 1901, were underrepresented. Mayor Baker of
Nashville brought suit, saying that the apportionment denied voters of urban areas equal protection of the law as
guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The federal court refused to enter the political thicket of State districting, and the
case was appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Baker case, seemingly a fairly simple issue of voting rights, had a variety of levels, including a very complicated
argument over Judicial Review, which we'll only touch lightly.
On its best remembered level, Baker was the forerunner of a case heard the following year, Gray v. Sanders, which would
establish the doctrine of one person one vote. Baker did not go quite that far, though Chief Justice Earl Warren called it
the "most vital decision" during his term on the high court. If this is a little exaggerated, the case nevertheless was a
crucial moment in the key area of voting rights.
At issue in Baker was a suit by a variety of urban Tennessee voters that the state's redistricting plan -- calling for a
reapportionment among its counties with every decennial census -- was arbitrary and weighted against urban
voters. Compounding the issue was the fact that the state had not carried out a formal reapportionment since 1901.
The plaintiffs in the case had had no relief from Tennessee authorities or state courts, and the federal courts found that
they had neither constitutional jurisdiction in the issue, nor was it justiciable, i.e. it could not or should not be resolved by
the judiciary, being a political issue. So the suit was brought directly to the Supreme Court.
The high court was divided over the issue of justiciability, with Justice Frankfurter reminding them of a recent
squeaker of a case, Colgrove v. Green, wherein the Court had refused to interfere in redistricting problems in
Illinois, calling them a "political thicket". But Justice William Brennan, writing for the Court in the current case, had no
difficulty with the jurisdiction issue, and very little with the question of justiciability. Instead he found that the plaintiffs
had sufficient interest in the value of their votes to have standing before the Court, and that the larger issue of Equal
Protection of the Laws expressed in the Fourteenth Amendment made it imperative that the Court invest itself in
such cases.
Brennan concluded that the "denial of equal protection [of the laws] present[s] a justiciable constitutional case of action
upon which appellants [the plaintiffs in this case] are entitled to a trial and a decision." Basically the Court decided that
the Baker plaintiffs could go back to federal court and pursue their lawsuit against the state of Tennessee. The
Court also indicated that Tennessee's failure to abide by its own constitution in reapportioning voting districts should
not limit the scope of the decision, but that any state whose apportionment methods fail to show a "rational basis"
is open to suit by effected voters.
In their dissents, Justices Harlan and Frankfurter expressed concern that this decision would interpret the Equal
Protection Clause as requiring mathematically precise vote distribution (which in fact did become the interpretation
in Gray), and that the federal courts were opening themselves to involvement in an arena which has since "time out of
mind" been determined by an "essentially political conflict of forces"
Although the doctrine of one person one vote seems ultimately to be the proper interpretation of the Constitution, setting
aside the purely practical concerns of constantly maintaining such a precise balance, Justice Harlan made a valuable

observation when he suggested that it may not be so wrong for a state like Tennessee to use apportionment to
insure that less populous rural areas maintain a sufficiently strong voice in government.
In any event, Baker opened the floodgates for voter suits against the states, with thirty-six states finding themselves
defendants in such suits within a year. The barrage forced the Court to abandon the somewhat loose concept of
"rationality" and adopt mathematical apportionment in Gray.
Baker v. Carr (1962)
The complaint, Baker alleged that by means of a 1901 statute of Tennessee apportioning the members of the General
Assembly among the state's 95 counties, "these plaintiffs and others similarly situated, are denied the equal protection of
the laws accorded them by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States by virtue of the debasement
of their votes. Carr, the Tennessee secretary of State was the named defendant.
The suit was dismissed by a three-judge court in the Middle District of Tennessee. The court held that it lacked
jurisdiction of the subject matter and also that no claim was stated upon which relief could be granted.
The U. S. Supreme Court took jurisdiction of the case and in a -2 decision overruled the Tennessee federal judges.The
Court noted provisions in the Tennessee Constitution that require the legislature to carry out decennial redistricting
based on the number of qualified voters in each county. The Court noted that since 1901 the Tennessee legislature
had failed to carry out the required redistricting.
Justice, William Brennan, speaking for the Court's majority, declared, "In light of the District Court's treatment of the
case, we hold today only (a) that the court possessed jurisdiction of the subject matter; (b) that a justifiable cause of
action is stated upon which appellants would be entitled to appropriate relief; and (c) because appellees raise the issue
before this Court, that the appellants have standing to challenge the Tennessee apportionment statutes.
"A citizen's right to a vote free of arbitrary impairment by state action has been judicially recognized as a right secured by
the Constitution, when such impairment resulted from dilution by a false tally, cf. United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299,
or by a refusal to count votes from arbitrarily selected precincts, cf. United States v. Mosley, 238 U.S. 383, or by a stuffing
of the ballot box cf. Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371.
"We conclude that the complaint's allegations of a denial of equal protection present a
justifiable constitutional cause of action upon which appellants are entitled to a trial and a
decision. The right asserted is within the reach of judicial protection under the Fourteenth
Amendment."