Baker v. Carr

Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that retreated from the Court's political question doctrine, deciding that redistricting (attempts to change the way voting districts are delineated) issues present justiciable questions, thus enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide redistricting cases. The defendants unsuccessfully argued that redistricting of legislative districts is a "political question", and hence not a question that may be resolved by federal courts.

Reynolds v. Sims (1964) was another major case of the Warren Court era involving representation in state legislative districts and called for "one man, one vote," and both state houses in legislatures to be apportioned by population rather than geographic districts.

Background

Plaintiff Charles Baker was a Republican who lived in Shelby County, Tennessee, the county in which Memphis is located, of which he was the Mayor. The Tennessee State Constitution required that legislative districts for the Tennessee General Assembly be redrawn every ten years according to the federal census to provide for districts of substantially equal population (as was to be done for congressional districts). Baker's complaint was that Tennessee had not redistricted since 1901, in response to the 1900 census.