WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court unanimously endorsed election maps that bolster the growing political influence of America’s Latinos, ruling Monday that states can count everyone, not just eligible voters, in drawing voting districts.
The decision rejected a challenge from Texas voters that also could have diluted the voting power of urban Democrats, to the benefit of rural Republicans.
The case offered a test of the principle of “one person, one vote,” the requirement laid out by the Supreme Court in 1964 that political districts be roughly equal in population. The issue here, though, was what population to consider: everyone or just eligible voters.
All 50 states use total population as their basis for drawing district lines, but the challengers said the rural state Senate districts in which they lived had vastly more eligible voters than urban districts, making their votes count for less, in violation of the Constitution.
In Texas, and other states with large immigrant populations, urban districts include many more people who are too young, not citizens or otherwise ineligible to vote. Civil rights groups said forcing states to change their method of constructing districts would have damaged Latino political influence.
“Jurisdictions, we hold, may design state and local legislative districts with equal total populations; they are not obliged to equalize voter populations,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, summarizing her opinion for the court.
Ginsburg said that “history, our decisions and settled practice in all 50 states and countless local jurisdictions point in the same direction.” She also declared that “representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote” and that nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates.
The court stopped short of saying that states must use total population. And it also did not rule on whether states are free to use a different measure, as Texas had asked.
Ginsburg said the court was not resolving whether states may base maps on voter population.
Richard Hasen, an expert in election law at the University of California at Irvine Law School, said, “A contrary ruling would have shifted power to Republican, rural districts, and away from Democratic, urban areas.”
Edward Blum, whose Project on Fair Representation backed the lawsuit, said he was disappointed in the outcome but predicted that “the issue of voter equality in the United States is not going to go away.”
Although the justices were unanimous in upholding Texas’ use of total population, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito declined to join Ginsburg’s opinion.
