# Baker v. Carr

> Supreme Court of the United States · March 26, 1962 · 369 U.S. 186

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/106366

## Case

- **Full name:** BAKER Et Al. v. CARR Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** March 26, 1962
- **Citations:** 369 U.S. 186; 82 S. Ct. 691; 7 L. Ed. 2d 663; 1962 U.S. LEXIS 1567
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Opinion
- **Judges:** Brennan, Douglas, Clark, Stewart, Whittaker, Harlan, Frankfurter
- **Cited by:** 5,294 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/106366

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that, “[tjhere are sweeping statements to the effect that all questions touching foreign relations are political questions. Not only does resolution of such issues frequently turn on standards that defy judicial application, or involve the exercise of a discretion d…
- concluding that the malapportionment claim "should have been dismissed for `failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted'" because "[u]ntil it is first decided to what extent [the] right [to apportion] is limited by the Federal Constitution, and whether what [a St…
- concluding that plaintiffs alleging “impairment of their votes by the 1901 apportionment …. have standing” because “[t]hey are asserting ‘a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes,’ not merely a claim of ‘the right possessed by every…
- explaining that “[t]he gist of the question of standing” is whether the plaintiff has “alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for i…
- stating that the “gist of the question of standing” is whether “the appellants [have] alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for il…

## Opinion text

369 U.S. 186 (1962)
BAKER ET AL.
v.
CARR ET AL.
No. 6.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued April 19-20, 1961.
Set for reargument May 1, 1961.
Reargued October 9, 1961.
Decided March 26, 1962.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE.
Charles S. Rhyne and Z. T. Osborn, Jr. reargued the cause for appellants. With them on the briefs were Hobart F. Atkins, Robert H. Jennings, Jr., J. W. Anderson, C. R. McClain, Walter Chandler, Harris A. Gilbert, E. K. Meacham and Herzel H. E. Plaine.
*187 Jack Wilson, Assistant Attorney General of Tennessee, reargued the cause for appellees. With him on the briefs were George F. McCanless, Attorney General, and Milton P. Rice and James M. Glasgow, Assistant Attorneys General.
Solicitor General Cox, by special leave of Court, 365 U. S. 864 , reargued the cause for the United States, as amicus curiae, urging reversal. With him on the briefs were Assistant Attorney General Marshall, Acting Assistant Attorney General Doar, Bruce J. Terris, Harold H. Greene, David Rubin and Howard A. Glickstein.
Briefs of amici curiae, in support of appellants, were filed by J. Howard Edmondson, Governor of Oklahoma, and Norman E. Reynolds, Jr. for the Governor; W. Scott Miller, Jr. and George J. Long for the City of St. Matthews, Kentucky; Roger Arnebergh, Henry P. Kucera, J. Elliott Drinard, Barnett I. Shur, Alexander G. Brown, Nathaniel H. Goldstick and Charles S. Rhyne for the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers; Eugene H. Nickerson and David M. Levitan for John F. English et al.; Upton Sisson, Clare S. Hornsby, Walter L. Nixon, Jr. and John Sekul for Marvin Fortner et al.; and Theodore Sachs for August Scholle.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
This civil action was brought under 42 U. S. C. §§ 1983 and 1988 to redress the alleged deprivation of federal constitutional rights. The complaint, alleging that by means of a 1901 statute of Tennessee apportioning the members of the General Assembly among the State's 95 counties, [1] "these plaintiffs and others similarly situated, *188 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," was dismissed by a three-judge court convened under 28 U. S. C. § 2281 in the Middle District of Tennessee. [2] The court held that it lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter and also that no claim was stated upon which relief could be granted. 179 F. Supp. 824 . We noted probable jurisdiction of the appeal. 364 U. S. 898 . [3] We hold that the dismissal was error, and remand the cause to the District Court for trial and further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The General Assembly of Tennessee consists of the Senate with 33 members and the House of Representatives with 99 members. The Tennessee Constitution provides in Art. II as follows:
"Sec. 3. Legislative authority—Term of office.— The Legislative authority of this State shall be vested in a General Assembly, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives, both dependent on the people; who shall hold their offices for two years from the day of the general election.
"Sec. 4. Census.—An enumeration of the qualified voters, and an apportionment of the Representatives in the General Assembly, shall be made in the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, and within every subsequent term of ten years.
"Sec. 5. Apportionment of representatives.—The number of Representatives shall, at the several *189 periods of making the enumeration, be apportioned among the several counties or districts, according to the number of qualified voters in each; and shall not exceed seventy-five, until the population of the State shall be one million and a half, and shall never exceed ninety-nine; Provided, that any county having two-thirds of the ratio shall be entitled to one member.
"Sec. 6. Apportionment of senators.—The number of Senators shall, at the several periods of making the enumeration, be apportioned among the several counties or districts according to the number of qualified electors in each, and shall not exceed one-third the number of representatives. In apportioning the Senators among the different counties, the fraction that may be lost by any county or counties, in the apportionment of members to the House of Representatives, shall be made up to such county or counties in the Senate, as near as may be practicable. When a district is composed of two or more counties, they shall be adjoining; and no county shall be divided in forming a district."
Thus, Tennessee's standard for allocating legislative representation among her counties is the total number of qualified voters resident in the respective counties, subject only to minor qualifications. [4] Decennial reapportionment *190 in compliance with the constitutional scheme was effected by the General Assembly each decade from 1871 to 1901. The 1871 apportionment [5] was preceded by an 1870 statute requiring an enumeration. [6] The 1881 apportionment involved three statutes, the first authorizing an enumeration, the second enlarging the Senate from 25 to *191 33 members and the House from 75 to 99 members, and the third apportioning the membership of both Houses. [7] In 1891 there were both an enumeration and an apportionment. [8] In 1901 the General Assembly abandoned separate enumeration in favor of reliance upon the Federal Census and passed the Apportionment Act here in controversy. [9] In the more than 60 years since that action, all proposals in both Houses of the General Assembly for reapportionment have failed to pass. [10]
*192 Between 1901 and 1961, Tennessee has experienced substantial growth and redistribution of her population. In 1901 the population was 2,020,616, of whom 487,380 were eligible to vote. [11] The 1960 Federal Census reports the State's population at 3,567,089, of whom 2,092,891 are eligible to vote. [12] The relative standings of the counties in terms of qualified voters have changed significantly. It is primarily the continued application of the 1901 Apportionment Act to this shifted and enlarged voting population which gives rise to the present controversy.
Indeed, the complaint alleges that the 1901 statute, even as of the time of its passage, "made no apportionment of Representatives and Senators in accordance with the constitutional formula . . . , but instead arbitrarily and capriciously apportioned representatives in the Senate and House without reference . . . to any logical or reasonable formula whatever." [13] It is further alleged *193 that "because of the population changes since 1900, and the failure of the Legislature to reapportion itself since 1901," the 1901 statute became "unconstitutional and obsolete." Appellants also argue that, because of the composition of the legislature effected by the 1901 Apportionment Act, redress in the form of a state constitutional amendment to change the entire mechanism for reapportioning, or any other change short of that, is difficult or impossible. [14] The complaint concludes that "these plaintiffs *194 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." [15] They seek a *195 declaration that the 1901 statute is unconstitutional and an injunction restraining the appellees from acting to conduct any further elections under it. They also pray that unless and until the General Assembly enacts a valid reapportionment, the District Court should either decree a reapportionment by mathematical application of the Tennessee constitutional formulae to the most recent Federal Census figures, or direct the appellees to conduct legislative elections, primary and general, at large. They also pray for such other and further relief as may be appropriate.
I.
THE DISTRICT COURT'S OPINION AND ORDER OF DISMISSAL.
Because we deal with this case on appeal from an order of dismissal granted on appellees' motions, precise identification *196 of the issues presently confronting us demands clear exposition of the grounds upon which the District Court rested in dismissing the case. The dismissal order recited that the court sustained the appellees' grounds "(1) that the Court lacks jurisdiction of the subject matter, and (2) that the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted . . . ."
In the setting of a case such as this, the recited grounds embrace two possible reasons for dismissal:
First: That the facts and injury alleged, the legal bases invoked as creating the rights and duties relied upon, and the relief sought, fail to come within that language of Article III of the Constitution and of the jurisdictional statutes which define those matters concerning which United States District Courts are empowered to act;
Second: That, although the matter is cognizable and facts are alleged which establish infringement of appellants' rights as a result of state legislative action departing from a federal constitutional standard, the court will not proceed because the matter is considered unsuited to judicial inquiry or adjustment.
We treat the first ground of dismissal as "lack of jurisdiction of the subject matter." The second we consider to result in a failure to state a justiciable cause of action.
The District Court's dismissal order recited that it was issued in conformity with the court's per curiam opinion. The opinion reveals that the court rested its dismissal upon lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and lack of a justiciable cause of action without attempting to distinguish between these grounds. After noting that the plaintiffs challenged the existing legislative apportionment in Tennessee under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, and summarizing the supporting allegations and the relief requested, the court stated that
"The action is presently before the Court upon the defendants' motion to dismiss predicated upon three *197 grounds: first, that the Court lacks jurisdiction of the subject matter; second, that the complaints fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted; and third, that indispensable party defendants are not before the Court." 179 F. Supp., at 826 .
The court proceeded to explain its action as turning on the case's presenting a "question of the distribution of political strength for legislative purposes." For,
"From a review of [numerous Supreme Court] . . . decisions there can be no doubt that the federal rule, as enunciated and applied by the Supreme Court, is that the federal courts, whether from a lack of jurisdiction or from the inappropriateness of the subject matter for judicial consideration, will not intervene in cases of this type to compel legislative reapportionment." 179 F. Supp., at 826 .
The court went on to express doubts as to the feasibility of the various possible remedies sought by the plaintiffs. 179 F. Supp., at 827-828 . Then it made clear that its dismissal reflected a view not of doubt that violation of constitutional rights was alleged, but of a court's impotence to correct that violation:
"With the plaintiffs' argument that the legislature of Tennessee is guilty of a clear violation of the state constitution and of the rights of the plaintiffs the Court entirely agrees. It also agrees that the evil is a serious one which should be corrected without further delay. But even so the remedy in this situation clearly does not lie with the courts. It has long been recognized and is accepted doctrine that there are indeed some rights guaranteed by the Constitution for the violation of which the courts cannot give redress." 179 F. Supp., at 828 .
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 justiciable cause of *198 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. [16] Beyond noting that we have no cause at this stage to doubt the District Court will be able to fashion relief if violations of constitutional rights are found, it is improper now to consider what remedy would be most appropriate if appellants prevail at the trial.
II.
JURISDICTION OF THE SUBJECT MATTER.
The District Court was uncertain whether our cases withholding federal judicial relief rested upon a lack of federal jurisdiction or upon the inappropriateness of the subject matter for judicial consideration—what we have designated "nonjusticiability." The distinction between the two grounds is significant. In the instance of nonjusticiability, consideration of the cause is not wholly and immediately foreclosed; rather, the Court's inquiry necessarily proceeds to the point of deciding whether the duty asserted can be judicially identified and its breach judicially determined, and whether protection for the right asserted can be judicially molded. In the instance of lack of jurisdiction the cause either does not "arise under" the Federal Constitution, laws or treaties (or fall within one of the other enumerated categories of Art. III, § 2), or is not a "case or controversy" within the meaning of that section; or the cause is not one described by any jurisdictional statute. Our conclusion, see pp. 208-237. infra, that this cause presents no nonjusticiable "political question" settles the only possible doubt that it is a case or controversy. Under the present heading of "Jurisdiction *199 of the Subject Matter" we hold only that the matter set forth in the complaint does arise under the Constitution and is within 28 U. S. C. § 1343 .
Article III, § 2, of the Federal Constitution provides that "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority . . . ." It is clear that the cause of action is one which "arises under" the Federal Constitution. The complaint alleges that the 1901 statute effects an apportionment that deprives the appellants of the equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Dismissal of the complaint upon the ground of lack of jurisdiction of the subject matter would, therefore, be justified only if that claim were "so attenuated and unsubstantial as to be absolutely devoid of merit," Newburyport Water Co. v. Newburyport, 193 U. S. 561, 579 , or "frivolous," Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678, 683 . [17] That the claim is unsubstantial must be "very plain." Hart v. Keith Vaudeville Exchange, 262 U. S. 271, 274 . Since the District Court obviously and correctly did not deem the asserted federal constitutional claim unsubstantial and frivolous, it should not have dismissed the complaint for want of jurisdiction of the subject matter. And of course no further consideration of the merits of the claim is relevant to a determination of the court's jurisdiction of the subject matter. We said in an earlier voting case from Tennessee: "It is obvious . . . that the court, in dismissing for want of jurisdiction, was controlled by what it deemed to be the want of merit in the averments which were made in the complaint as to the violation of the Federal right. But as the very nature of the controversy was Federal, and, therefore, *200 jurisdiction existed, whilst the opinion of the court as to the want of merit in the cause of action might have furnished ground for dismissing for that reason, it afforded no sufficient ground for deciding that the action was not one arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States." Swafford v. Templeton, 185 U. S. 487, 493 . "For it is well settled that the failure to state a proper cause of action calls for a judgment on the merits and not for a dismissal for want of jurisdiction." Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S. 678, 682 . See also Binderup v. Pathe Exchange, 263 U. S. 291, 305-308 .
Since the complaint plainly sets forth a case arising under the Constitution, the subject matter is within the federal judicial power defined in Art. III, § 2, and so within the power of Congress to assign to the jurisdiction of the District Courts. Congress has exercised that power in 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3):
"The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action authorized by law [18] to be commenced by any person . . . [t]o redress the deprivation, under color of any State law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, of any right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitution of the United States . . . ." [19]
*201 An unbroken line of our precedents sustains the federal courts' jurisdiction of the subject matter of federal constitutional claims of this nature. The first cases involved the redistricting of States for the purpose of electing Representatives to the Federal Congress. When the Ohio Supreme Court sustained Ohio legislation against an attack for repugnancy to Art. I, § 4, of the Federal Constitution, we affirmed on the merits and expressly refused to dismiss for want of jurisdiction "In view . . . of the subject-matter of the controversy and the Federal characteristics which inhere in it . . . ." Ohio ex rel. Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U. S. 565, 570 . When the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of a suit to enjoin the Secretary of State of Minnesota from acting under Minnesota redistricting legislation, we reviewed the constitutional merits of the legislation and reversed the State Supreme Court. Smiley v. Holm, 285 U. S. 355 . And see companion cases from the New York Court of Appeals and the Missouri Supreme Court, Koenig v. Flynn, 285 U. S. 375 ; Carroll v. Becker, 285 U. S. 380 . When a three-judge District Court, exercising jurisdiction under the predecessor of 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3), permanently enjoined officers of the State of Mississippi from conducting an election of Representatives under a Mississippi redistricting act, we reviewed the federal questions on the merits and reversed the District Court. Wood v. Broom, 287 U. S. 1 , reversing 1 F. Supp. 134 . A similar decree of a District Court, exercising jurisdiction under the same statute, concerning a Kentucky redistricting act, was *202 reviewed and the decree reversed. Mahan v. Hume, 287 U. S. 575 , reversing 1 F. Supp. 142 . [20]
The appellees refer to Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549 , as authority that the District Court lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter. Appellees misconceive the holding of that case. The holding was precisely contrary to their reading of it. Seven members of the Court participated in the decision. Unlike many other cases in this field which have assumed without discussion that there was jurisdiction, all three opinions filed in Colegrove discussed the question. Two of the opinions expressing the views of four of the Justices, a majority, flatly held that there was jurisdiction of the subject matter. MR. JUSTICE BLACK joined by MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and Mr. Justice Murphy stated: "It is my judgment that the District Court had jurisdiction . . . ," citing the predecessor of 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3), and Bell v. Hood, supra. 328 U. S., at 568 . Mr. Justice Rutledge, writing separately, expressed agreement with this conclusion. 328 U. S., at 564, 565, n. 2 . Indeed, it is even questionable that the opinion of MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, joined by Justices Reed and Burton, doubted jurisdiction of the subject matter. Such doubt would have been inconsistent with the professed willingness to turn the decision on either the majority or concurring views in Wood v. Broom, supra. 328 U. S., at 551 .
Several subsequent cases similar to Colegrove have been decided by the Court in summary per curiam statements. None was dismissed for want of jurisdiction of the subject matter. Cook v. Fortson, 329 U. S. 675 ; Turman v. *203 Duckworth , ibid.; Colegrove v. Barrett, 330 U. S. 804 ; [21] Tedesco v. Board of Supervisors, 339 U. S. 940 ; Remmey v. Smith, 342 U. S. 916 ; Cox v. Peters, 342 U. S. 936 ; Anderson v. Jordan, 343 U. S. 912 ; Kidd v. McCanless, 352 U. S. 920 ; Radford v. Gary, 352 U. S. 991 ; Hartsfield v. Sloan, 357 U. S. 916 ; Matthews v. Handley, 361 U. S. 127 . [22]
Two cases decided with opinions after Colegrove likewise plainly imply that the subject matter of this suit is within District Court jurisdiction. In MacDougall v. Green, 335 U. S. 281 , the District Court dismissed for want of jurisdiction, which had been invoked under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3), a suit to enjoin enforcement of the requirement that nominees for state-wide elections be supported by a petition signed by a minimum number of persons from at least 50 of the State's 102 counties. This Court's disagreement with that action is clear since the Court affirmed the judgment after a review of the merits and concluded that the particular claim there was without merit. In South v. Peters, 339 U. S. 276 , we affirmed the dismissal of an attack on the Georgia "county unit" system but founded our action on a ground that plainly would not have been reached if the lower court lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter, which allegedy existed under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3). The express words of our holding were that "Federal courts consistently refuse to exercise their equity powers in cases posing *204 political issues arising from a state's geographical distribution of electoral strength among its political subdivisions." 339 U. S., at 277.
We hold that the District Court has jurisdiction of the subject matter of the federal constitutional claim asserted in the complaint.
III.
STANDING.
A federal court cannot "pronounce any statute, either of a State or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable with the Constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies." Liverpool Steamship Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U. S. 33, 39 . Have the appellants alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions? This is the gist of the question of standing. It is, of course, a question of federal law.
The complaint was filed by residents of Davidson, Hamilton, Knox, Montgomery, and Shelby Counties. Each is a person allegedly qualified to vote for members of the General Assembly representing his county. [23] These appellants sued "on their own behalf and on behalf of all qualified voters of their respective counties, and further, on behalf of all voters of the State of Tennessee who *205 are similarly situated . . . ." [24] The appellees are the Tennessee Secretary of State, Attorney General, Coordinator of Elections, and members of the State Board of Elections; the members of the State Board are sued in their own right and also as representatives of the County Election Commissioners whom they appoint. [25]
*206 We hold that the appellants do have standing to maintain this suit. Our decisions plainly support this conclusion. Many of the cases have assumed rather than articulated the premise in deciding the merits of similar claims. [26] And Colegrove v. Green, supra , squarely held that voters who allege facts showing disadvantage to themselves as individuals have standing to sue. [27] A number *207 of cases decided after Colegrove recognized the standing of the voters there involved to bring those actions. [28]
These appellants seek relief in order to protect or vindicate an interest of their own, and of those similarly situated. Their constitutional claim is, in substance, that the 1901 statute constitutes arbitrary and capricious state action, offensive to the Fourteenth Amendment in its irrational disregard of the standard of apportionment prescribed by the State's Constitution or of any standard, effecting a gross disproportion of representation to voting population. The injury which appellants assert is that this classification disfavors the voters in the counties in which they reside, placing them in a position of constitutionally unjustifiable inequality vis-a-vis voters *208 in irrationally favored counties. 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 ; United States v. Saylor, 322 U. S. 385 .
It would not be necessary to decide whether appellants' allegations of impairment of their votes by the 1901 apportionment will, ultimately, entitle them to any relief, in order to hold that they have standing to seek it. If such impairment does produce a legally cognizable injury, they are among those who have sustained it. They are asserting "a plain, direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes," Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S., at 438, not merely a claim of "the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the Government be administered according to law . . . ." Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129 ; compare Leser v. Garnett, 258 U. S. 130 . They are entitled to a hearing and to the District Court's decision on their claims. "The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 163 .
IV.
JUSTICIABILITY.
In holding that the subject matter of this suit was not justiciable, the District Court relied on Colegrove v. Green, supra , and subsequent per curiam cases. [29] The *209 court stated: "From a review of these decisions there can be no doubt that the federal rule . . . is that the federal courts . . . will not intervene in cases of this type to compel legislative reapportionment." 179 F. Supp., at 826 . We understand the District Court to have read the cited cases as compelling the conclusion that since the appellants sought to have a legislative apportionment held unconstitutional, their suit presented a "political question" and was therefore nonjusticiable. We hold that this challenge to an apportionment presents no nonjusticiable "political question." The cited cases do not hold the contrary.
Of course the mere fact that the suit seeks protection of a political right does not mean it presents a political question. Such an objection "is little more than a play upon words." Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U. S. 536, 540 . Rather, it is argued that apportionment cases, whatever the actual wording of the complaint, can involve no federal constitutional right except one resting on the guaranty of a republican form of government, [30] and that complaints based on that clause have been held to present political questions which are nonjusticiable.
We hold that the claim pleaded here neither rests upon nor implicates the Guaranty Clause and that its justiciability is therefore not foreclosed by our decisions of cases involving that clause. The District Court misinterpreted Colegrove v. Green and other decisions of this Court on which it relied. Appellants' claim that they are being denied equal protection is justiciable, and if *210 "discrimination is sufficiently shown, the right to relief under the equal protection clause is not diminished by the fact that the discrimination relates to political rights." Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U. S. 1, 11 . To show why we reject the argument based on the Guaranty Clause, we must examine the authorities under it. But because there appears to be some uncertainty as to why those cases did present political questions, and specifically as to whether this apportionment case is like those cases, we deem it necessary first to consider the contours of the "political question" doctrine.
Our discussion, even at the price of extending this opinion, requires review of a number of political question cases, in order to expose the attributes of the doctrine— attributes which, in various settings, diverge, combine, appear, and disappear in seeming disorderliness. Since that review is undertaken solely to demonstrate that neither singly nor collectively do these cases support a conclusion that this apportionment case is nonjusticiable, we of course do not explore their implications in other contexts. That review reveals that in the Guaranty Clause cases and in the other "political question" cases, it is the relationship between the judiciary and the coordinate branches of the Federal Government, and not the federal judiciary's relationship to the States, which gives rise to the "political question."
We have said that "In determining whether a question falls within [the political question] category, the approriateness under our system of government of attributing finality to the action of the political departments and also the lack of satisfactory criteria for a judicial determination are dominant considerations." Coleman v. Miller, 307 U. S. 433, 454-455 . The nonjusticiability of a political question is primarily a function of the separation of powers. Much confusion results from the capacity of the "political question" label to obscure the need for *211 case-by-case inquiry. Deciding whether a matter has in any measure been committed by the Constitution to another branch of government, or whether the action of that branch exceeds whatever authority has been committed, is itself a delicate exercise in constitutional interpretation, and is a responsibility of this Court as ultimate interpreter of the Constitution. To demonstrate this requires no less than to analyze representative cases and to infer from them the analytical threads that make up the political question doctrine. We shall then show that none of those threads catches this case.
Foreign relations: There are sweeping statements to the effect that all questions touching foreign relations are political questions. [31] Not only does resolution of such issues frequently turn on standards that defy judicial application, or involve the exercise of a discretion demonstrably committed to the executive or legislature; [32] but many such questions uniquely demand single-voiced statement of the Government's views. [33] Yet it is error to suppose that every case or controversy which touches foreign relations lies beyond judicial cognizance. Our cases in this field seem invariably to show a discriminating analysis of the particular question posed, in terms of the history of its management by the political branches, of its susceptibility to judicial handling in the light of its nature and posture in the specific case, and of the possible consequences *212 of judicial action. For example, though a court will not ordinarily inquire whether a treaty has been terminated, since on that question "governmental action . . . must be regarded as of controlling importance," if there has been no conclusive "governmental action" then a court can construe a treaty and may find it provides the answer. Compare Terlinden v. Ames, 184 U. S. 270, 285 , with Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts v. New Haven, 8 Wheat. 464, 492-495 . [34] Though a court will not undertake to construe a treaty in a manner inconsistent with a subsequent federal statute, no similar hesitancy obtains if the asserted clash is with state law. Compare Whitney v. Robertson; 124 U. S. 190 , with Kolovrat v. Oregon, 366 U. S. 187 .
While recognition of foreign governments so strongly defies judicial treatment that without executive recognition a foreign state has been called "a republic of whose existence we know nothing," [35] and the judiciary ordinarily follows the executive as to which nation has sovereignty over disputed territory, [36] once sovereignty over an area is politically determined and declared, courts may examine the resulting status and decide independently whether a statute applies to that area. [37] Similarly, recognition of belligerency abroad is an executive responsibility, but if the executive proclamations fall short of an explicit answer, a court may construe them seeking, for example, to determine whether the situation is such that statutes designed to assure American neutrality have *213 become operative. The Three Friends, 166 U. S. 1, 63, 66 . Still again, though it is the executive that determines a person's status as representative of a foreign government, Ex parte Hitz, 111 U. S. 766 , the executive's statements will be construed where necessary to determine the court's jurisdiction, In re Baiz, 135 U. S. 403 . Similar judicial action in the absence of a recognizedly authoritative executive declaration occurs in cases involving the immunity from seizure of vessels owned by friendly foreign governments. Compare Ex parte Peru, 318 U. S. 578 , with Mexico v. Hoffman, 324 U. S. 30, 34-35 .
Dates of duration of hostilities: Though it has been stated broadly that "the power which declared the necessity is the power to declare its cessation, and what the cessation requires," Commercial Trust Co. v. Miller, 262 U. S. 51, 57 , here too analysis reveals isolable reasons for the presence of political questions, underlying this Court's refusal to review the political departments' determination of when or whether a war has ended. Dominant is the need for finality in the political determination, for emergency's nature demands "A prompt and unhesitating obedience," Martin v. Mott, 12 Wheat. 19, 30 (calling up of militia). Moreover, "the cessation of hostilities does not necessarily end the war power. It was stated in Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & W. Co., 251 U. S. 146, 161 , that the war power includes the power `to remedy the evils which have arisen from its rise and progress' and continues during that emergency. Stewart v. Kahn, 11 Wall. 493, 507 ." Fleming v. Mohawk Wrecking Co., 331 U. S. 111, 116 . But deference rests on reason, not habit. [38] The question in a particular case may not seriously implicate considerations of finality— e. g., a public program of importance *214 (rent control) yet not central to the emergency effort. [39] Further, clearly definable criteria for decision may be available. In such case the political question barrier falls away: "[A] Court is not at liberty to shut its eyes to an obvious mistake, when the validity of the law depends upon the truth of what is declared. . . . [It can] inquire whether the exigency still existed upon which the continued operation of the law depended." Chastleton Corp. v. Sinclair, 264 U. S. 543, 547-548 . [40] Compare Woods v. Miller Co., 333 U. S. 138 . On the other hand, even in private litigation which directly implicates no feature of separation of powers, lack of judicially discoverable standards and the drive for even-handed application may impel reference to the political departments' determination of dates of hostilities' beginning and ending. The Protector, 12 Wall. 700 .
Validity of enactments: In Coleman v. Miller, supra , this Court held that the questions of how long a proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution remained open to ratification, and what effect a prior rejection had on a subsequent ratification, were committed to congressional resolution and involved criteria of decision that necessarily escaped the judicial grasp. [41] Similar considerations apply to the enacting process: "The respect due to coequal and independent departments," and the need for finality and certainty about the status of a statute contribute to judicial reluctance to inquire whether, as passed, it complied with all requisite formalities. Field v. Clark, 143 U. S. 649, 672, 676-677 ; see Leser v. Garnett, 258 U. S. 130, 137 . But it is not true that courts will never delve *215 into a legislature's records upon such a quest: If the enrolled statute lacks an effective date, a court will not hesitate to seek it in the legislative journals in order to preserve the enactment. Gardner v. The Collector, 6 Wall. 499 . The political question doctrine, a tool for maintenance of governmental order, will not be so applied as to promote only disorder.
The status of Indian tribes: This Court's deference to the political departments in determining whether Indians are recognized as a tribe, while it reflects familiar attributes of political questions, [42] United States v. Holliday, 3 Wall. 407, 419 , also has a unique element in that "the relation of the Indians to the United States is marked by peculiar and cardinal distinctions which exist no where else. . . . [The Indians are] domestic dependent nations . . . in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian." The Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 5 Pet. 1, 16, 17 . [43] Yet, here too, there is no blanket rule. While *216 " `It is for [Congress] . . . , and not for the courts, to determine when the true interests of the Indian require his release from [the] condition of tutelage' . . . , it is not meant by this that Congress may bring a community or body of people within the range of this power by arbitrarily calling them an Indian tribe . . . ." United States v. Sandoval, 231 U. S. 28, 46 . Able to discern what is "distinctly Indian," ibid., the courts will strike down *217 any heedless extension of that label. They will not stand impotent before an obvious instance of a manifestly unauthorized exercise of power.
It is apparent that several formulations which vary slightly according to the settings in which the questions arise may describe a political question, although each has one or more elements which identify it as essentially a function of the separation of powers. Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question.
Unless one of these formulations is inextricable from the case at bar, there should be no dismissal for nonjusticiability on the ground of a political question's presence. The doctrine of which we treat is one of "political questions," not one of "political cases." The courts cannot reject as "no law suit" a bona fide controversy as to whether some action denominated "political" exceeds constitutional authority. The cases we have reviewed show the necessity for discriminating inquiry into the precise facts and posture of the particular case, and the impossibility of resolution by any semantic cataloguing.
But it is argued that this case shares the characteristics of decisions that constitute a category not yet considered, cases concerning the Constitution's guaranty, in Art. IV, *218 § 4, of a republican form of government. A conclusion as to whether the case at bar does present a political question cannot be confidently reached until we have considered those cases with special care. We shall discover that Guaranty Clause claims involve those elements which define a "political question," and for that reason and no other, they are nonjusticiable. In particular, we shall discover that the nonjusticiability of such claims has nothing to do with their touching upon matters of state governmental organization.
Republican form of government: Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1 , though in form simply an action for damages for trespass was, as Daniel Webster said in opening the argument for the defense, "an unusual case." [44] The defendants, admitting an otherwise tortious breaking and entering, sought to justify their action on the ground that they were agents of the established lawful government of Rhode Island, which State was then under martial law to defend itself from active insurrection; that the plaintiff was engaged in that insurrection; and that they entered under orders to arrest the plaintiff. The case arose "out of the unfortunate political differences which agitated the people of Rhode Island in 1841 and 1842," 7 How., at 34 , and which had resulted in a situation wherein two groups laid competing claims to recognition as the lawful government. [45] The plaintiff's right to *219 recover depended upon which of the two groups was entitled to such recognition; but the lower court's refusal to receive evidence or hear argument on that issue, its charge to the jury that the earlier established or "charter" government was lawful, and the verdict for the defendants, were affirmed upon appeal to this Court.
Chief Justice Taney's opinion for the Court reasoned as follows: (1) If a court were to hold the defendants' acts unjustified because the charter government had no legal existence during the period in question, it would follow that all of that government's actions—laws enacted, taxes collected, salaries paid, accounts settled, sentences passed—were of no effect; and that "the officers who carried their decisions into operation [were] answerable as trespassers, if not in some cases as criminals." [46] There was, of course, no room for application of any doctrine of de facto status to uphold prior acts of an officer not authorized de jure, for such would have defeated the plaintiff's very action. A decision for the plaintiff would inevitably have produced some significant measure of chaos, a consequence to be avoided if it could be done without abnegation of the judicial duty to uphold the Constitution.
(2) No state court had recognized as a judicial responsibility settlement of the issue of the locus of state governmental authority. Indeed, the courts of Rhode Island had in several cases held that "it rested with the political power to decide whether the charter government had been displaced or not," and that that department had acknowledged no change.
*220 (3) Since "[t]he question relates, altogether, to the constitution and laws of [the] . . . State," the courts of the United States had to follow the state courts' decisions unless there was a federal constitutional ground for overturning them. [47]
(4) No provision of the Constitution could be or had been invoked for this purpose except Art. IV, § 4, the Guaranty Clause. Having already noted the absence of standards whereby the choice between governments could be made by a court acting independently, Chief Justice Taney now found further textual and practical reasons for concluding that, if any department of the United States was empowered by the Guaranty Clause to resolve the issue, it was not the judiciary:
"Under this article of the Constitution it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State. For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State before it can determine whether it is republican or not. And when the senators and representatives of a State are admitted into the councils of the Union, the authority of the government under which they are appointed, as well as its republican character, is recognized by the proper constitutional authority. And its decision is binding on every other department of the government, and could not be questioned in a judicial tribunal. It is true that the contest in this case did not last long enough to bring the matter to this issue; and . . . Congress was not called upon to decide the controversy. Yet the right to decide is placed there, and not in the courts.
*221 "So, too, as relates to the clause in the above-mentioned article of the Constitution, providing for cases of domestic violence. It rested with Congress, too, to determine upon the means proper to be adopted to fulfill this guarantee. . . . [B]y the act of February 28, 1795, [Congress] provided, that, `in case of an insurrection in any State against the government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such State or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), to call forth such number of the militia of any other State or States, as may be applied for, as he may judge sufficient to suppress such insurrection.'
"By this act, the power of deciding whether the exigency had arisen upon which the government of the United States is bound to interfere, is given to the President. . . .
"After the President has acted and called out the militia, is a Circuit Court of the United States authorized to inquire whether his decision was right? . . . If the judicial power extends so far, the guarantee contained in the Constitution of the United States is a guarantee of anarchy, and not of order. . . .
"It is true that in this case the militia were not called out by the President. But upon the application of the governor under the charter government, the President recognized him as the executive power of the State, and took measures to call out the militia to support his authority if it should be found necessary for the general government to interfere . . . . [C]ertainly no court of the United States, with a knowledge of this decision, would have been justified in recognizing the opposing party as the lawful government *222 . . . . In the case of foreign nations, the government acknowledged by the President is always recognized in the courts of justice. . . ." 7 How., at 42-44 .
Clearly, several factors were thought by the Court in Luther to make the question there "political": the commitment to the other branches of the decision as to which is the lawful state government; the unambiguous action by the President, in recognizing the charter government as the lawful authority; the need for finality in the executive's decision; and the lack of criteria by which a court could determine which form of government was republican. [48]
*223 But the only significance that Luther could have for our immediate purposes is in its holding that the Guaranty Clause is not a repository of judicially manageable standards which a court could utilize independently in order to identify a State's lawful government. The Court has since refused to resort to the Guaranty Clause—which alone had been invoked for the purpose—as the source of a constitutional standard for invalidating state action. See Taylor & Marshall v. Beckham ( No. 1 ), 178 U. S. 548 (claim that Kentucky's resolution of contested gubernatorial election deprived voters of republican government held nonjusticiable); Pacific States Tel. Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118 (claim that initiative and referendum negated republican government held nonjusticiable); Kiernan v. Portland, 223 U. S. 151 (claim that municipal charter amendment per municipal initiative and referendum negated republican government held nonjusticiable); *224 Marshall v. Dye, 231 U. S. 250 (claim that Indiana's constitutional amendment procedure negated republican government held nonjusticiable); O'Neill v. Leamer, 239 U. S. 244 (claim that delegation to court of power to form drainage districts negated republican government held "futile"); Ohio ex rel. Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U. S. 565 (claim that invalidation of state reapportionment statute per referendum negates republican government held nonjusticiable); [49] Mountain Timber Co. v. Washington, 243 U. S. 219 (claim that workmen's compensation violates republican government held nonjusticiable); Ohio ex rel. Bryant v. Akron Metropolitan Park District, 281 U. S. 74 (claim that rule requiring invalidation of statute by all but one justice of state court negated republican government held nonjusticiable); Highland Farms Dairy v. Agnew, 300 U. S. 608 (claim that delegation to agency of power to control milk prices violated republican government, rejected).
Just as the Court has consistently held that a challenge to state action based on the Guaranty Clause presents no justiciable question so has it held, and for the same reasons, that challenges to congressional action on the ground of inconsistency with that clause present no justiciable question. In Georgia v. Stanton, 6 Wall. 50 , the State sought by an original bill to enjoin execution of the Reconstruction Acts, claiming that it already possessed "A republican State, in every political, legal, constitutional, and juridical sense," and that enforcement of the new Acts "Instead of keeping the guaranty against a forcible overthrow of its government by foreign invaders or domestic insurgents, . . . is destroying that very government by force." [50] Congress had clearly refused to *225 recognize the republican character of the government of the suing State. [51] It seemed to the Court that the only constitutional claim that could be presented was under the Guaranty Clause, and Congress having determined that the effects of the recent hostilities required extraordinary measures to restore governments of a republican form, this Court refused to interfere with Congress' action at the behest of a claimant relying on that very guaranty. [52]
In only a few other cases has the Court considered Art. IV, § 4, in relation to congressional action. It has refused to pass on a claim relying on the Guaranty Clause to establish that Congress lacked power to allow the States to employ the referendum in passing on legislation redistricting for congressional seats. Ohio ex rel. Davis v. Hildebrant, supra . And it has pointed out that Congress is not required to establish republican government in the territories before they become States, and before they have attained a sufficient population to warrant a *226 popularly elected legislature. Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 278-279 (dictum). [53]
We come, finally, to the ultimate inquiry whether our precedents as to what constitutes a nonjusticiable "political question" bring the case before us under the umbrella of that doctrine. A natural beginning is to note whether any of the common characteristics which we have been able to identify and label descriptively are present. We find none: The question here is the consistency of state action with the Federal Constitution. We have no question decided, or to be decided, by a political branch of government coequal with this Court. Nor do we risk embarrassment of our government abroad, or grave disturbance at home [54] if we take issue with Tennessee as to the constitutionality of her action here challenged. Nor need the appellants, in order to succeed in this action, ask the Court to enter upon policy determinations for which judicially manageable standards are lacking. Judicial standards under the Equal Protection Clause are well developed and familiar, and it has been open to courts since the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment to determine, if on the particular facts they must, that a discrimination reflects no policy, but simply arbitrary and capricious action.
This case does, in one sense, involve the allocation of political power within a State, and the appellants *227 might conceivably have added a claim under the Guaranty Clause. Of course, as we have seen, any reliance on that clause would be futile. But because any reliance on the Guaranty Clause could not have succeeded it does not follow that appellants may not be heard on the equal protection claim which in fact they tender. True, it must be clear that the Fourteenth Amendment claim is not so enmeshed with those political question elements which render Guaranty Clause claims nonjusticiable as actually to present a political question itself. But we have found that not to be the case here.
In this connection special attention is due Pacific States Tel. Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 118 . In that case a corporation tax statute enacted by the initiative was attacked ostensibly on three grounds: (1) due process; (2) equal protection; and (3) the Guaranty Clause. But it was clear that the first two grounds were invoked solely in aid of the contention that the tax was invalid by reason of its passage:
"The defendant company does not contend here that it could not have been required to pay a license tax. It does not assert that it was denied an opportunity to be heard as to the amount for which it was taxed, or that there was anything inhering in the tax or involved intrinsically in the law which violated any of its constitutional rights. If such questions had been raised they would have been justiciable, and therefore would have required the calling into operation of judicial power. Instead, however, of doing any of these things, the attack on the statute here made is of a wholly different character. Its essentially political nature is at once made manifest by understanding that the assault which the contention here advanced makes it [ sic ] not on the tax as a tax, but on the State as a State. It is addressed to the *228 framework and political character of the government by which the statute levying the tax was passed. It is the government, the political entity, which (reducing the case to its essence) is called to the bar of this court, not for the purpose of testing judicially some exercise of power assailed, on the ground that its exertion has injuriously affected the rights of an individual because of repugnancy to some constitutional limitation, but to demand of the State that it establish its right to exist as a State, republican in form." 223 U. S., at 150-151.
The due process and equal protection claims were held nonjusticiable in Pacific States not because they happened to be joined with a Guaranty Clause claim, or because they sought to place before the Court a subject matter which might conceivably have been dealt with through the Guaranty Clause, but because the Court believed that they were invoked merely in verbal aid of the resolution of issues which, in its view, entailed political questions. Pacific States may be compared with cases such as Mountain Timber Co. v. Washington, 243 U. S. 219 , wherein the Court refused to consider whether a workmen's compensation act violated the Guaranty Clause but considered at length, and rejected, due process and equal protection arguments advanced against it; and O'Neill v. Leamer, 239 U. S. 244 , wherein the Court refused to consider whether Nebraska's delegation of power to form drainage districts violated the Guaranty Clause, but went on to consider and reject the contention that the action against which an injunction was sought was not a taking for a public purpose.
We conclude then that the nonjusticiability of claims resting on the Guaranty Clause which arises from their embodiment of questions that were thought "political," can have no bearing upon the justiciability of the equal protection claim presented in this case. Finally, we *229 emphasize that it is the involvement in Guaranty Clause claims of the elements thought to define "political questions," and no other feature, which could render them nonjusticiable. Specifically, we have said that such claims are not held nonjusticiable because they touch matters of state governmental organization. Brief examination of a few cases demonstrates this.
When challenges to state action respecting matters of "the administration of the affairs of the State and the officers through whom they are conducted" [55] have rested on claims of constitutional deprivation which are amenable to judicial correction, this Court has acted upon its view of the merits of the claim. For example, in Boyd v. Nebraska ex rel. Thayer, 143 U. S. 135 , we reversed the Nebraska Supreme Court's decision that Nebraska's Governor was not a citizen of the United States or of the State and therefore could not continue in office. In Kennard v. Louisiana ex rel. Morgan, 92 U. S. 480 , and Foster v. Kansas ex rel. Johnston, 112 U. S. 201 , we considered whether persons had been removed from public office by procedures consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment's due process guaranty, and held on the merits that they had. And only last Term, in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 , we applied the Fifteenth Amendment to strike down a redrafting of municipal boundaries which effected a discriminatory impairment of voting rights, in the face of what a majority of the Court of Appeals thought to be a sweeping commitment to state legislatures of the power to draw and redraw such boundaries. [56]
Gomillion was brought by a Negro who had been a resident of the City of Tuskegee, Alabama, until the municipal boundaries were so recast by the State Legislature *230 as to exclude practically all Negroes. The plaintiff claimed deprivation of the right to vote in municipal elections. The District Court's dismissal for want of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. This Court unanimously reversed. This Court's answer to the argument that States enjoyed unrestricted control over municipal boundaries was:
"Legislative control of municipalities, no less than other state power, lies within the scope of relevant limitations imposed by the United States Constitution.. . . The opposite conclusion, urged upon us by respondents, would sanction the achievement by a State of any impairment of voting rights whatever so long as it was cloaked in the garb of the realignment of political subdivisions. `It is inconceivable that guaranties embedded in the Constitution of the United States may thus be manipulated out of existence.' " 364 U. S., at 344-345 .
To a second argument, that Colegrove v. Green, supra , was a barrier to hearing the merits of the case, the Court responded that Gomillion was lifted "out of the so-called `political' arena and into the conventional sphere of constitutional litigation" because here was discriminatory treatment of a racial minority violating the Fifteenth Amendment.
"A statute which is alleged to have worked unconstitutional deprivations of petitioners' rights is not immune to attack simply because the mechanism employed by the legislature is a redefinition of municipal boundaries. . . . While in form this is merely an act redefining metes and bounds, if the allegations are established, the inescapable human effect of this essay in geometry and geography is to despoil colored citizens, and only colored citizens, of *231 their theretofore enjoyed voting rights. That was not Colegrove v. Green .
"When a State exercises power wholly within the domain of state interest, it is insulated from federal judicial review. But such insulation is not carried over when state power is used as an instrument for circumventing a federally protected right." 364 U. S., at 347 . [57]
We have not overlooked such cases as In re Sawyer, 124 U. S. 200 , and Walton v. House of Representatives, 265 U. S. 487 , which held that federal equity power could not be exercised to enjoin a state proceeding to remove a public officer. But these decisions explicitly reflect only a traditional limit upon equity jurisdiction, and not upon federal courts' power to inquire into matters of state governmental organization. This is clear not only from the opinions in those cases, but also from White v. Berry, 171 U. S. 366 , which, relying on Sawyer , withheld federal equity from staying removal of a federal officer. Wilson v. North Carolina, 169 U. S. 586 , simply dismissed an appeal from an unsuccessful suit to upset a State's removal procedure, on the ground that the constitutional claim presented—that a jury trial was necessary if the removal procedure was to comport with due process requirements—was frivolous. Finally, in Taylor and Marshall v. Beckham ( No. 1 ), 178 U. S. 548 , where losing candidates attacked the constitutionality of Kentucky's resolution of a contested gubernatorial election, the Court refused to consider the merits of a claim posited upon *232 the Guaranty Clause, holding it presented a political question, but also held on the merits that the ousted candidates had suffered no deprivation of property without due process of law. [58]
Since, as has been established, the equal protection claim tendered in this case does not require decision of any political question, and since the presence of a matter affecting state government does not render the case nonjusticiable, it seems appropriate to examine again the reasoning by which the District Court reached its conclusion that the case was nonjusticiable.
We have already noted that the District Court's holding that the subject matter of this complaint was nonjusticiable relied upon Colegrove v. Green, supra , and later cases. Some of those concerned the choice of members of a state legislature, as in this case; others, like Colegrove itself and earlier precedents, Smiley v. Holm, 285 U. S. 355 , Koenig v. Flynn, 285 U. S. 375 , and Carroll v. Becker, 285 U. S. 380 , concerned the choice of Representatives in the Federal Congress. Smiley, Koenig and Carroll settled the issue in favor of justiciability of questions of congressional redistricting. The Court followed these precedents in Colegrove although over the dissent of three of the seven Justices who participated in that decision. On the issue of justiciability, all four Justices comprising a majority relied upon Smiley v. Holm , but in two opinions, one for three Justices, 328 U. S., at 566, 568 , and a separate one by Mr. Justice Rutledge, 328 U. S., at 564 . The argument that congressional redistricting problems presented a "political question" the resolution of which was confided to Congress might have been rested upon Art. I, § 4, Art. I, § 5, Art. I, § 2, and Amendment *233 XIV, § 2. Mr. Justice Rutledge said: "But for the ruling in Smiley v. Holm, 285 U. S. 355 , I should have supposed that the provisions of the Constitution, Art. I, § 4, that "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for . . . Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations . . .'; Art. I, § 2 [but see Amendment XIV, § 2], vesting in Congress the duty of apportionment of representatives among the several states `according to their respective Numbers'; and Art. I, § 5, making each House the sole judge of the qualifications of its own members, would remove the issues in this case from justiciable cognizance. But, in my judgment, the Smiley case rules squarely to the contrary, save only in the matter of degree. . . . Assuming that that decision is to stand, I think . . . that its effect is to rule that this Court has power to afford relief in a case of this type as against the objection that the issues are not justiciable." 328 U. S., at 564-565 . Accordingly, Mr. Justice Rutledge joined in the conclusion that the case was justiciable, although he held that the dismissal of the complaint should be affirmed. His view was that "The shortness of the time remaining [before forthcoming elections] makes it doubtful whether action could, or would, be taken in time to secure for petitioners the effective relief they seek. . . . I think, therefore, the case is one in which the Court may properly, and should, decline to exercise its jurisdiction. Accordingly, the judgment should be affirmed and I join in that disposition of the cause." 328 U. S., at 565-566 . [59]
*234 Article I, §§ 2, 4, and 5, and Amendment XIV, § 2, relate only to congressional elections and obviously do not govern apportionment of state legislatures. However, our decisions in favor of justiciability even in light of those provisions plainly afford no support for the District Court's conclusion that the subject matter of this controversy presents a political question. Indeed, the refusal to award relief in Colegrove resulted only from the controlling view of a want of equity. Nor is anything contrary to be found in those per curiams that came after Colegrove. This Court dismissed the appeals in Cook v. Fortson and Turman v. Duckworth, 329 U. S. 675 , as moot. MacDougall v. Green, 335 U. S. 281 , held only that in that case equity would not act to void the State's requirement that there be at least a minimum of support for nominees *235 for state-wide office, over at least a minimal area of the State. Problems of timing were critical in Remmey v. Smith, 342 U. S. 916 , dismissing for want of a substantial federal question a three-judge court's dismissal of the suit as prematurely brought, 102 F. Supp. 708 ; and in Hartsfield v. Sloan, 357 U. S. 916 , denying mandamus sought to compel the convening of a three-judge court— movants urged the Court to advance consideration of their case, "Inasmuch as the mere lapse of time before this case can be reached in the normal course of . . . business may defeat the cause, and inasmuch as the time problem is due to the inherent nature of the case . . . ." South v. Peters, 339 U. S. 276 , like Colegrove appears to be a refusal to exercise equity's powers; see the statement of the holding, quoted, supra, p. 203. And Cox v. Peters, 342 U. S. 936 , dismissed for want of a substantial federal question the appeal from the state court's holding that their primary elections implicated no "state action." See 208 Ga. 498 , 67 S. E. 2d 579 . But compare Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 .
Tedesco v. Board of Supervisors, 339 U. S. 940 , indicates solely that no substantial federal question was raised by a state court's refusal to upset the districting of city council seats, especially as it was urged that there was a rational justification for the challenged districting. See 43 So. 2d 514 . Similarly, in Anderson v. Jordan, 343 U. S. 912 , it was certain only that the state court had refused to issue a discretionary writ, original mandamus in the Supreme Court. That had been denied without opinion, and of course it was urged here that an adequate state ground barred this Court's review. And in Kidd v. McCanless, 200 Tenn. 273 , 292 S. W. 2d 40 , the Supreme Court of Tennessee held that it could not invalidate the very statute at issue in the case at bar, but its holding rested on its state law of remedies, i. e., the state view of *236 de facto officers, [60] and not on any view that the norm for legislative apportionment in Tennessee is not numbers of qualified voters resident in the several counties. Of course this Court was there precluded by the adequate state ground, and in dismissing the appeal, 352 U. S. 920 , we cited Anderson, supra, as well as Colegrove. Nor does the Tennessee court's decision in that case bear upon this, for just as in Smith v. Holm, 220 Minn. 486 , 19 N. W. 2d 914 , and Magraw v. Donovan, 163 F. Supp. 184 , 177 F. Supp. 803 , a state court's inability to grant relief does not bar a federal court's assuming jurisdiction to inquire into alleged deprivation of federal constitutional rights. Problems of relief also controlled in Radford v. Gary, 352 U. S. 991 , affirming the District Court's refusal to mandamus the Governor to call a session of the legislature, to mandamus the legislature then to apportion, and if they did not comply, to mandamus the State Supreme Court to do so. And Matthews v. Handley, 361 U. S. 127 , affirmed a refusal to strike down the State's gross income tax statute—urged on the ground that the legislature was malapportioned—that had rested on the adequacy of available state legal remedies for suits involving that tax, including challenges to its constitutionality. Lastly, Colegrove v. Barrett, 330 U. S. 804 , in which Mr. Justice Rutledge concurred in this Court's refusal to note the appeal from a dismissal for want of equity, is sufficiently explained by his statement in Cook v. Fortson, supra : "The discretionary exercise or nonexercise of equitable or declaratory judgment jurisdiction. . . in one case is not precedent in another case *237 where the facts differ." 329 U. S., at 678, n. 8 . (Citations omitted.)
We conclude that the complaint's allegations of a denial of equal protection present a justiciable 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.
The judgment of the District Court is reversed and the cause is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
MR. JUSTICE WHITTAKER did not participate in the decision of this case.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT.
The Tennessee Code Annotated provides for representation in the General Assembly as follows:
"3-101. Composition — Counties electing one representative each. —The general assembly of the state of Tennessee shall be composed of thirty-three (33) senators and ninety-nine (99) representatives, to be apportioned among the qualified voters of the state as follows: Until the next enumeration and apportionment of voters each of the following counties shall elect one (1) representative, to wit: Bedford, Blount, Cannon, Carroll, Chester, Cocke, Claiborne, Coffee, Crockett, DeKalb, Dickson, Dyer, Fayette, Franklin, Giles, Greene, Hardeman, Hardin, Henry, Hickman, Hawkins, Haywood, Jackson, Lake, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lincoln, Marion, Marshall, Maury, Monroe, Montgomery, Moore, McMinn, McNairy, Obion, Overton, Putnam, Roane, Robertson, Rutherford, Sevier, Smith, Stewart, Sullivan, Sumner, Tipton, Warren, Washington, White, Weakley, Williamson *238 and Wilson. [Acts 1881 (E. S.), ch. 5, § 1; 1881 (E. S.), ch. 6, § 1; 1901, ch. 122, § 2; 1907, ch. 178, §§ 1, 2; 1915, ch. 145; Shan., § 123; Acts 1919, ch. 147, §§ 1, 2; 1925 Private, ch. 472, § 1; Code 1932, § 140; Acts 1935, ch. 150, § 1; 1941, ch. 58, § 1; 1945, ch. 68, § 1; C. Supp. 1950, § 140.]
"3-102. Counties electing two representatives each. — The following counties shall elect two (2) representatives each, to wit: Gibson and Madison. [Acts 1901, ch. 122, § 3; Shan., § 124; mod. Code 1932, § 141.]
"3-103. Counties electing three representatives each. — The following counties shall elect three (3) representatives each, to wit: Knox and Hamilton. [Acts 1901, ch. 122, § 4; Shan., § 125; Code 1932, § 142.]
"3-104. Davidson County. —Davidson county shall elect six (6) representatives. [Acts 1901, ch. 122, § 5; Shan., § 126; Code 1932, § 143.]
"3-105. Shelby county. —Shelby county shall elect eight (8) representatives. Said county shall consist of eight (8) representative districts, numbered one (1) through eight (8), each district co-extensive with the county, with one (1) representative to be elected from each district. [Acts 1901, ch. 122, § 6; Shan., § 126al; Code 1932, § 144; Acts 1957, ch. 220, § 1; 1959, ch. 213, § 1.]
"3-106. Joint representatives. —The following counties jointly, shall elect one representative, as follows, to wit:
"First district—Johnson and Carter.
"Second district—Sullivan and Hawkins.
"Third district—Washington, Greene and Unicoi.
"Fourth district—Jefferson and Hamblen.
"Fifth district—Hancock and Grainger.
"Sixth district—Scott, Campbell, and Union.
"Seventh district—Anderson and Morgan.
"Eighth district—Knox and Loudon.
*239 "Ninth district—Polk and Bradley.
"Tenth district—Meigs and Rhea.
"Eleventh district—Cumberland, Bledsoe, Sequatchie, Van Buren and Grundy.
"Twelfth district—Fentress, Pickett, Overton, Clay and Putnam.
"Fourteenth district—Sumner, Trousdale and Macon.
"Fifteenth district—Davidson and Wilson.
"Seventeenth district—Giles, Lewis, Maury and Wayne.
"Eighteenth district—Williamson, Cheatham and Robertson.
"Nineteenth district—Montgomery and Houston.
"Twentieth district—Humphreys and Perry.
"Twenty-first district—Benton and Decatur.
"Twenty-second district—Henry, Weakley and Carroll.
"Twenty-third district—Madison and Henderson.
"Twenty-sixth district—Tipton and Lauderdale. [Acts 1901, ch. 122, § 7; 1907, ch. 178, §§ 1, 2; 1915, ch. 145, §§ 1, 2; Shan., § 127; Acts 1919, ch. 147, § 1; 1925 Private, ch. 472, § 2; Code 1932, § 145; Acts 1933, ch. 167, § 1; 1935, ch. 150, § 2; 1941, ch. 58, § 2; 1945, ch. 68, § 2; C. Supp. 1950, § 145; Acts 1957, ch. 220, § 2.]
"3-107. State senatorial districts. —Until the next enumeration and apportionment of voters, the following counties shall comprise the senatorial districts, to wit:
"First district—Johnson, Carter, Unicoi, Greene, and Washington.
"Second district—Sullivan and Hawkins.
"Third district—Hancock, Morgan, Grainger, Claiborne, Union, Campbell, and Scott.
"Fourth district—Cocke, Hamblen, Jefferson, Sevier, and Blount.
"Fifth district—Knox.
"Sixth district—Knox, Loudon, Anderson, and Roane.
*240 "Seventh district—McMinn, Bradley, Monroe, and Polk.
"Eighth district—Hamilton.
"Ninth district—Rhea, Meigs, Bledsoe, Sequatchie, Van Buren, White, and Cumberland.
"Tenth district—Fentress, Pickett, Clay, Overton, Putnam, and Jackson.
"Eleventh district—Marion, Franklin, Grundy and Warren.
"Twelfth district—Rutherford, Cannon, and DeKalb.
"Thirteenth district—Wilson and Smith.
"Fourteenth district—Sumner, Trousdale and Macon.
"Fifteenth district—Montgomery and Robertson.
"Sixteenth district—Davidson.
"Seventeenth district—Davidson.
"Eighteenth district—Bedford, Coffee and Moore.
"Nineteenth district—Lincoln and Marshall.
"Twentieth district—Maury, Perry and Lewis.
"Twenty-first district—Hickman, Williamson and Cheatham.
"Twenty-second district—Giles, Lawrence and Wayne.
"Twenty-third district—Dickson, Humphreys, Houston and Stewart.
"Twenty-fourth district—Henry and Carroll.
"Twenty-fifth district—Madison, Henderson and Chester.
"Twenty-sixth district—Hardeman, McNairy, Hardin, Decatur and Benton.
"Twenty-seventh district—Gibson.
"Twenty-eighth district—Lake, Obion and Weakley.
"Twenty-ninth district—Dyer, Lauderdale and Crockett.
"Thirtieth district—Tipton and Shelby.
"Thirty-first district—Haywood and Fayette.
"Thirty-second district—Shelby.
*241 "Thirty-third district—Shelby. [Acts 1901, ch. 122, § 1; 1907, ch. 3, § 1; Shan., § 128; Code 1932, § 146; Acts 1945, ch. 11, § 1; C. Supp. 1950, § 146.]"
Today's apportionment statute is as enacted in 1901, with minor changes. For example:
(1) In 1957, Shelby County was raised from 7 1/2 to 8 representatives. Acts of 1957, c. 220. See also Acts of 1959, c. 213. The 1957 Act, § 2, abolished the Twenty-seventh Joint Representative District, which had included Shelby and Fayette Counties.
(2) In 1907, Marion County was given a whole House seat instead of sharing a joint seat with Franklin County. Acts of 1907, c. 178. Acts of 1915, c. 145, repealed that change, restoring the status quo ante. And that reversal was itself reversed, Acts of 1919, c. 147.
(3) James County was in 1901 one of five counties in the Seventh State Senate District and one of the three in the Ninth House District. It appears that James County no longer exists but we are not advised when or how it was dissolved.
(4) In 1945, Anderson and Roane Counties were shifted to the Sixth State Senate District from the Seventh, and Monroe and Polk Counties were shifted to the Seventh from the Sixth. Acts of 1945, c. 11.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, concurring.
While I join the opinion of the Court and, like the Court, do not reach the merits, a word of explanation is necessary. [1] I put to one side the problems of "political" *242 questions involving the distribution of power between this Court, the Congress, and the Chief Executive. We have here a phase of the recurring problem of the relation of the federal courts to state agencies. More particularly, the question is the extent to which a State may weight one person's vote more heavily than it does another's.
So far as voting rights are concerned, there are large gaps in the Constitution. Yet the right to vote is inherent in the republican form of government envisaged by Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution. The House— and now the Senate—are chosen by the people. The time, manner, and place of elections of Senators and Representatives are left to the States (Article I, Section 4, Clause 1; Amendment XVII) subject to the regulatory power of Congress. A "republican form" of government is guaranteed each State by Article IV, Section 4, and each is likewise promised protection against invasion. [2] Ibid. *243 That the States may specify the qualifications for voters is implicit in Article I, Section 2, Clause 1, which provides that the House of Representatives shall be chosen by the *244 people and that "the Electors (voters) in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors (voters) of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature." The same provision, contained in the Seventeenth Amendment, governs the election of Senators. Within limits those qualifications may be fixed by state law. See Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board, 360 U. S. 45, 50-51 . Yet, as stated in Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651, 663-664 , those who vote for members of Congress do not "owe their right to vote to the State law in any sense which makes the exercise of the right to depend exclusively on the law of the State." The power of Congress to prescribe the qualifications for voters and thus override state law is not in issue here. It is, however, clear that by reason of the commands of the Constitution there are several qualifications that a State may not require.
Race, color, or previous condition of servitude is an impermissible standard by reason of the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone is sufficient to explain Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 . See Taper, Gomillion versus Lightfoot (1962), pp. 12-17.
Sex is another impermissible standard by reason of the Nineteenth Amendment.
There is a third barrier to a State's freedom in prescribing qualifications of voters and that is the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the provision invoked here. And so the question is, may a State weight the vote of one county or one district more heavily than it weights the vote in another?
The traditional test under the Equal Protection Clause has been whether a State has made "an invidious discrimination," as it does when it selects "a particular race or nationality for oppressive treatment." See Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 541 . Universal equality is not *245 the test; there is room for weighting. As we stated in Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 489 , "The prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause goes no further than the invidious discrimination."
I agree with my Brother CLARK that if the allegations in the complaint can be sustained a case for relief is established. We are told that a single vote in Moore County, Tennessee, is worth 19 votes in Hamilton County, that one vote in Stewart or in Chester County is worth nearly eight times a single vote in Shelby or Knox County. The opportunity to prove that an "invidious discrimination" exists should therefore be given the appellants.
It is said that any decision in cases of this kind is beyond the competence of courts. Some make the same point as regards the problem of equal protection in cases involving racial segregation. Yet the legality of claims and conduct is a traditional subject for judicial determination. Adjudication is often perplexing and complicated. An example of the extreme complexity of the task can be seen in a decree apportioning water among the several States. Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U. S. 589, 665 . The constitutional guide is often vague, as the decisions under the Due Process and Commerce Clauses show. The problem under the Equal Protection Clause is no more intricate. See Lewis, Legislative Apportionment and the Federal Courts, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 1057 , 1083-1084.
There are, of course, some questions beyond judicial competence. Where the performance of a "duty" is left to the discretion and good judgment of an executive officer, the judiciary will not compel the exercise of his discretion one way or the other ( Kentucky v. Dennison, 24 How. 66, 109 ), for to do so would be to take over the office. Cf. Federal Communications Comm'n v. Broadcasting Co., 309 U. S. 134, 145 .
*246 Where the Constitution assigns a particular function wholly and indivisibly [3] to another department, the federal judiciary does not intervene. Oetjen v. Central Leather Co., 246 U. S. 297, 302 . None of those cases is relevant here.
*247 There is no doubt that the federal courts have jurisdiction of controversies concerning voting rights. The Civil Rights Act gives them authority to redress the deprivation "under color of any State law" of any "right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitution of the United States or by any Act of Congress providing for equal rights of citizens . . . ." 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3). And 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (4) gives the federal courts authority to award damages or issue an injunction to redress the violation of "any Act of Congress providing for the protection of civil rights, including the right to vote. " (Italics added.) The element of state action covers a wide range. For as stated in United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299 , 326:
"Misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law, is action taken `under color of' state law." And see Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 .
The right to vote in both federal and state elections was protected by the judiciary long before that right received the explicit protection it is now accorded by § 1343 (4). Discrimination against a voter on account of race has been penalized ( Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651 ) or struck down. Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U. S. 536 ; Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649 ; Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 . Fraudulent acts that dilute the votes of some *248 have long been held to be within judicial cognizance. Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371 . The "right to have one's vote counted" whatever his race or nationality or creed was held in United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383, 386 , to be "as open to protection by Congress as the right to put a ballot in a box." See also United States v. Classic, supra, 324-325 ; United States v. Saylor, 322 U. S. 385 .
Chief Justice Holt stated in Ashby v. White , 2 Ld. Raym. 938, 956 (a suit in which damages were awarded against election officials for not accepting the plaintiff's vote, 3 Ld. Raym. 320) that:
"To allow this action will make publick officers more careful to observe the constitution of cities and boroughs, and not to be so partial as they commonly are in all elections, which is indeed a great and growing mischief, and tends to the prejudice of the peace of the nation."
The same prophylactic effect will be produced here, as entrenched political regimes make other relief as illusory in this case as a petition to Parliament in Ashby v. White would have been. [4]
*249 Intrusion of the Federal Government into the election machinery of the States has taken numerous forms—investigations ( Hannah v. Larche, 363 U. S. 420 ); criminal proceedings ( Ex parte Siebold, supra ; Ex parte Yarbrough, supra ; United States v. Mosley, supra ; United States v. Classic, supra ); collection of penalties ( Smith v. Allwright, supra ); suits for declaratory relief and for an injunction ( Terry v. Adams, supra ); suits by the United States under the Civil Rights Act to enjoin discriminatory practices. United States v. Raines, 362 U. S. 17 .
As stated by Judge McLaughlin in Dyer v. Kazuhisa Abe, 138 F. Supp. 220, 236 (an apportionment case in Hawaii which was reversed and dismissed as moot, 256 F. 2d 728 ):
"The whole thrust of today's legal climate is to end unconstitutional discrimination. It is ludicrous to preclude judicial relief when a mainspring of representative government is impaired. Legislators have no immunity from the Constitution. The legislatures of our land should be made as responsive to the Constitution of the United States as are the citizens who elect the legislators."
With the exceptions of Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549 ; MacDougall v. Green, 335 U. S. 281 ; South v. Peters, 339 U. S. 276 , and the decisions they spawned, the Court has never thought that protection of voting rights *250 was beyond judicial cognizance. Today's treatment of those cases removes the only impediment to judicial cognizance of the claims stated in the present complaint.
The justiciability of the present claims being established, any relief accorded can be fashioned in the light of well-known principles of equity. [5]
*251 MR. JUSTICE CLARK, concurring.
One emerging from the rash of opinions with their accompanying clashing of views may well find himself suffering a mental blindness. The Court holds that the appellants have alleged a cause of action. However, it refuses to award relief here—although the facts are undisputed— and fails to give the District Court any guidance whatever. One dissenting opinion, bursting with words that go through so much and conclude with so little, contemns the majority action as "a massive repudiation of the experience of our whole past." Another describes the complaint as merely asserting conclusory allegations that Tennessee's apportionment is "incorrect," "arbitrary," "obsolete," and "unconstitutional." I believe it can be shown that this case is distinguishable from earlier cases dealing with the distribution of political power by a State, that a patent violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution has been shown, and that an appropriate remedy may be formulated.
I.
I take the law of the case from MacDougall v. Green, 335 U. S. 281 (1948), which involved an attack under the Equal Protection Clause upon an Illinois election statute. The Court decided that case on its merits without hindrance from the "political question" doctrine. Although the statute under attack was upheld, it is clear *252 that the Court based its decision upon the determination that the statute represented a rational state policy. It stated:
"It would be strange indeed, and doctrinaire, for this Court, applying such broad constitutional concepts as due process and equal protection of the laws, to deny a State the power to assure a proper diffusion of political initiative as between its thinly populated counties and those having concentrated masses, in view of the fact that the latter have practical opportunities for exerting their political weight at the polls not available to the former. " Id., at 284 . (Emphasis supplied.)
The other cases upon which my Brethren dwell are all distinguishable or inapposite. The widely heralded case of Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549 (1946), was one not only in which the Court was bobtailed but in which there was no majority opinion. Indeed, even the "political question" point in MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER'S opinion was no more than an alternative ground. [1] Moreover, the appellants did not present an equal protection argument. [2] While it has served as a Mother Hubbard to most of the subsequent cases, I feel it was in that respect illcast and for all of these reasons put it to one side. [3] Likewise, *253 I do not consider the Guaranty Clause cases based on Art. I, § 4, of the Constitution, because it is not invoked here and it involves different criteria, as the Court's opinion indicates. Cases resting on various other considerations not present here, such as Radford v. Gary, 352 U. S. 991 (1957) (lack of equity); Kidd v. McCanless, 352 U. S. 920 (1956) (adequate state grounds supporting the state judgment); Anderson v. Jordan, 343 U. S. 912 (1952) (adequate state grounds); Remmey v. Smith, 342 U. S. 916 (1952) (failure to exhaust state procedures), are of course not controlling. Finally, the Georgia county-unit-system cases, such as South v. Peters, 339 U. S. 276 (1950), reflect the viewpoint of MacDougall, i. e., to refrain from intervening where there is some rational policy behind the State's system. [4]
II.
The controlling facts cannot be disputed. It appears from the record that 37% of the voters of Tennessee elect 20 of the 33 Senators while 40% of the voters elect 63 of the 99 members of the House. But this might not on its face be an "invidious discrimination," Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, 348 U. S. 483, 489 (1955), for a "statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it." McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 426 (1961).
It is true that the apportionment policy incorporated in Tennessee's Constitution, i. e., state-wide numerical equality of representation with certain minor qualifications, [5] is a rational one. On a county-by-county comparison *254 a districting plan based thereon naturally will have disparities in representation due to the qualifications. But this to my mind does not raise constitutional problems, for the overall policy is reasonable. However, the root of the trouble is not in Tennessee's Constitution, for admittedly its policy has not been followed. The discrimination lies in the action of Tennessee's Assembly in allocating legislative seats to counties or districts created by it. Try as one may, Tennessee's apportionment just cannot be made to fit the pattern cut by its Constitution. This was the finding of the District Court. The policy of the Constitution referred to by the dissenters, therefore, is of no relevance here. We must examine what the Assembly has done. [6] The frequency and magnitude of the inequalities in the present districting admit of no policy whatever. An examination of Table I accompanying this opinion, post, p. 262, conclusively reveals that the apportionment picture in Tennessee is a topsy-turvical of gigantic proportions. This is not to say that some of the disparity cannot be explained, but when the entire table is examined—comparing the voting strength of counties of like population as well as contrasting that of the smaller with the larger counties—it leaves but one conclusion, namely that Tennessee's apportionment is a crazy quilt without rational basis. At the risk of being accused of picking out a few of the horribles I shall allude to a series of examples that are taken from Table I.
As is admitted, there is a wide disparity of voting strength between the large and small counties. Some *255 samples are: Moore County has a total representation of two [7] with a population (2,340) of only one-eleventh of Rutherford County (25,316) with the same representation; Decatur County (5,563) has the same representation as Carter (23,303) though the latter has four times the population; likewise, Loudon County (13,264), Houston (3,084), and Anderson County (33,990) have the same representation, i. e., 1.25 each. But it is said that in this illustration all of the under-represented counties contain municipalities of over 10,000 population and they therefore should be included under the "urban" classification, rationalizing this disparity as an attempt to effect a rural-urban political balance. But in so doing one is caught up in the backlash of his own bull whip, for many counties have municipalities with a population exceeding 10,000, yet the same invidious discrimination is present. For example:
County Population Representation
Carter ........................... 23,303 1.10
Maury ........................... 24,556 2.25
Washington ....................... 36,967 1.93
Madison .......................... 37,245 3.50
*256 Likewise, counties with no municipality of over 10,000 suffer a similar discrimination:
County Population Representation
Grundy ............................ 6,540 0.95
Chester ........................... 6,391 2.00
Cumberland ........................ 9,593 0.63
Crockett .......................... 9,676 2.00
Loudon ............................ 13,264 1.25
Fayette ........................... 13,577 2.50
This could not be an effort to attain political balance between rural and urban populations. Since discrimination is present among counties of like population, the plan is neither consistent nor rational. It discriminates horizontally creating gross disparities between rural areas themselves as well as between urban areas themselves, [8] still maintaining the wide vertical disparity already pointed out between rural and urban.
It is also insisted that the representation formula used above (see n. 7) is "patently deficient" because "it eliminates from consideration the relative voting power of the counties that are joined together in a single election district." This is a strange claim coming from those who rely on the proposition that "the voice of every voter" need not have "approximate equality." Indeed, representative government, as they say, is not necessarily one of "bare numbers." The use of floterial districts in our political system is not ordinarily based on the theory that the floterial representative is splintered among the counties of his district per relative population. His function is to represent the whole district. However, I shall meet the charge on its own ground and by use of its "adjusted *257 `total representation' " formula show that the present apportionment is loco. For example, compare some "urban" areas of like population, using the HARLAN formula:
County Population Representation
Washington ......................... 36,967 2.65
Madison ............................ 37,245 4.87
Carter ............................. 23,303 1.48
Greene ............................. 23,649 2.05
Maury .............................. 24,556 3.81
Coffee ............................. 13,406 2.32
Hamblen ............................ 14,090 1.07
And now, using the same formula, compare some so-called "rural" areas of like population:
County Population Representation
Moore .............................. 2,340 1.23
Pickett ............................ 2,565 .22
Stewart ............................ 5,238 1.60
Cheatham ........................... 5,263 .74
Chester ............................ 6,391 1.36
Grundy ............................. 6,540 .69
Smith .............................. 8,731 2.04
Unicoi ............................. 8,787 0.40
And for counties with similar representation but with gross differences in population, take:
County Population Representation
Sullivan ........................... 55,712 4.07
Maury .............................. 24,556 3.81
Blount ............................. 30,353 2.12
Coffee ............................. 13,406 2.32
These cannot be "distorted effects," for here the same formula proposed by the dissenters is used and the result is even "a crazier" quilt.
*258 The truth is that—although this case has been here for two years and has had over six hours' argument (three times the ordinary case) and has been most carefully considered over and over again by us in Conference and individually—no one, not even the State nor the dissenters, has come up with any rational basis for Tennessee's apportionment statute.
No one—except the dissenters advocating the HARLAN "adjusted `total representation' " formula—contends that mathematical equality among voters is required by the Equal Protection Clause. But certainly there must be some rational design to a State's districting. The discrimination here does not fit any pattern—as I have said, it is but a crazy quilt. My Brother HARLAN contends that other proposed apportionment plans contain disparities. Instead of chasing those rabbits he should first pause long enough to meet appellants' proof of discrimination by showing that in fact the present plan follows a rational policy. Not being able to do this, he merely counters with such generalities as "classic legislative judgment," no "significant discrepancy," and "de minimis departures." I submit that even a casual glance at the present apportionment picture shows these conclusions to be entirely fanciful. If present representation has a policy at all, it is to maintain the status quo of invidious discrimination at any cost. Like the District Court, I conclude that appellants have met the burden of showing "Tennessee is guilty of a clear violation of the state constitution and of the [federal] rights of the plaintiffs. . . ."
III.
Although I find the Tennessee apportionment statute offends the Equal Protection Clause, I would not consider intervention by this Court into so delicate a field if there were any other relief available to the people of Tennessee. But the majority of the people of Tennessee have no *259 "practical opportunities for exerting their political weight at the polls" to correct the existing "invidious discrimination." Tennessee has no initiative and referendum. I have searched diligently for other "practical opportunities" present under the law. I find none other than through the federal courts. The majority of the voters have been caught up in a legislative strait jacket. Tennessee has an "informed, civically militant electorate" and "an aroused popular conscience," but it does not sear "the conscience of the people's representatives." This is because the legislative policy has riveted the present seats in the Assembly to their respective constituencies, and by the votes of their incumbents a reapportionment of any kind is prevented. The people have been rebuffed at the hands of the Assembly; they have tried the constitutional convention route, but since the call must originate in the Assembly it, too, has been fruitless. They have tried Tennessee courts with the same result, [9] and Governors have fought the tide only to flounder. It is said that there is recourse in Congress and perhaps that may be, but from a practical standpoint this is without substance. To date Congress has never undertaken such a task in any State. We therefore must conclude that the people of Tennessee are stymied and without judicial intervention will be saddled with the present discrimination in the affairs of their state government.
IV.
Finally, we must consider if there are any appropriate modes of effective judicial relief. The federal courts are of course not forums for political debate, nor should they *260 resolve themselves into state constitutional convention or legislative assemblies. Nor should their jurisdiction be exercised in the hope that such a declaration as is made today may have the direct effect of bringing on legislative action and relieving the courts of the problem of fashioning relief. To my mind this would be nothing less than blackjacking the Assembly into reapportioning the State. If judicial competence were lacking to fashion an effective decree, I would dismiss this appeal. However, like the Solicitor General of the United States, I see no such difficulty in the position of this case. One plan might be to start with the existing assembly districts, consolidate some of them, and award the seats thus released to those counties suffering the most egregious discrimination. Other possibilities are present and might be more effective. But the plan here suggested would at least release the strangle hold now on the Assembly and permit it to redistrict itself.
In this regard the appellants have proposed a plan based on the rationale of state-wide equal representation. Not believing that numerical equality of representation throughout a State is constitutionally required, I would not apply such a standard albeit a permissive one. Nevertheless, the dissenters attack it by the application of the HARLAN "adjusted `total representation' " formula. The result is that some isolated inequalities are shown, but this in itself does not make the proposed plan irrational or place it in the "crazy quilt" category. Such inequalities, as the dissenters point out in attempting to support the present apportionment as rational, are explainable. Moreover, there is no requirement that any plan have mathematical exactness in its application. Only where, as here, the total picture reveals incommensurables of both magnitude and frequency can it be said that there is present an invidious discrimination.
*261 In view of the detailed study that the Court has given this problem, it is unfortunate that a decision is not reached on the merits. The majority appears to hold, at least sub silentio, that an invidious discrimination is present, but it remands to the three-judge court for it to make what is certain to be that formal determination. It is true that Tennessee has not filed a formal answer. However, it has filed voluminous papers and made extended arguments supporting its position. At no time has it been able to contradict the appellants' factual claims; it has offered no rational explanation for the present apportionment; indeed, it has indicated that there are none known to it. As I have emphasized, the case proceeded to the point before the three-judge court that it was able to find an invidious discrimination factually present, and the State has not contested that holding here. In view of all this background I doubt if anything more can be offered or will be gained by the State on remand, other than time. Nevertheless, not being able to muster a court to dispose of the case on the merits, I concur in the opinion of the majority and acquiesce in the decision to remand. However, in fairness I do think that Tennessee is entitled to have my idea of what it faces on the record before us and the trial court some light as to how it might proceed.
As John Rutledge (later Chief Justice) said 175 years ago in the course of the Constitutional Convention, a chief function of the Court is to secure the national rights. [10] Its decision today supports the proposition for which our forebears fought and many died, namely, that to be fully conformable to the principle of right, the form of government must be representative. [11] That is the keystone upon which our government was founded *262 and lacking which no republic can survive. It is well for this Court to practice self-restraint and discipline in constitutional adjudication, but never in its history have those principles received sanction where the national rights of so many have been so clearly infringed for so long a time. National respect for the courts is more enhanced through the forthright enforcement of those rights rather than by rendering them nugatory through the interposition of subterfuges. In my view the ultimate decision today is in the greatest tradition of this Court.
TABLE I.
Present total Present total Proposed total
representation representation representation
using using J. ( appellants' plan ),
1950 voting J. Clark's Harlan's using J. Harlan's
County population formula formula formula
Van Buren ......... 2,039 .63 .23 .11
Moore ............. 2,340 2.00 1.23 .18
Pickett ........... 2,565 .70 .22 .24
Sequatchie ........ 2,904 .63 .33 .19
Meigs ............. 3,039 .93 .48 .17
Houston ........... 3,084 1.25 .46 .24
Trousdale ......... 3,351 1.33 .43 .12
Lewis ............. 3,413 1.25 .39 .25
Perry ............. 3,711 1.50 .71 .40
Bledsoe ........... 4,198 .63 .49 .24
Clay .............. 4,528 .70 .40 .42
Union ............. 4,600 .76 .37 .45
Hancock ........... 4,710 .93 .62 .49
Stewart ........... 5,238 1.75 1.60 .41
Cheatham .......... 5,263 1.33 .72 .20
Cannon ............ 5,341 2.00 1.43 .52
Decatur ........... 5,563 1.10 .79 .52
Lake .............. 6,252 2.00 1.44 .41
Chester ........... 6,391 2.00 1.36 .19
Grundy ............ 6,540 .95 .69 .43
Humphreys ......... 6,588 1.25 1.39 .72
Johnson ........... 6,649 1.10 .42 .43
*263
Present total Present total Proposed total
representation representation representation
using using J. ( appellants' plan ),
1950 voting J. Clark's Harlan's using J. Harlan's
County population formula formula formula
Jackson ........... 6,719 1.50 1.43 .63
De Kalb ........... 6,984 2.00 1.56 .68
Benton ............ 7,023 1.10 1.01 .66
Fentress .......... 7,057 .70 .62 .64
Grainger .......... 7,125 .93 .94 .65
Wayne ............. 7,176 1.25 .69 .76
Polk .............. 7,330 1.25 .68 .73
Hickman ........... 7,598 2.00 1.85 .80
Macon ............. 7,974 1.33 1.01 .61
Morgan ............ 8,308 .93 .59 .75
Scott ............. 8,417 .76 .68 .62
Smith ............. 8,731 2.50 2.04 .67
Unicoi ............ 8,787 .93 .40 .63
Rhea .............. 8,937 .93 1.42 .21
White ............. 9,244 1.43 1.69 .90
Overton ........... 9,474 1.70 1.83 .89
Hardin ............ 9,577 1.60 1.61 .93
Cumberland ........ 9,593 .63 1.10 .87
Crockett .......... 9,676 2.00 1.66 .63
Henderson ......... 10,199 1.50 .78 .96
Marion ............ 10,998 1.75 1.73 .72
Marshall .......... 11,288 2.50 2.28 .84
Dickson ........... 11,294 1.75 2.29 1.23
Jefferson ......... 11,359 1.10 .87 1.03
McNairy ........... 11,601 1.60 1.74 1.13
Cocke ............. 12,572 1.60 1.46 .89
Sevier ............ 12,793 1.60 1.47 .69
Claiborne ......... 12,799 1.43 1.61 1.34
Monroe ............ 12,884 1.75 1.68 1.30
Loudon ............ 13,264 1.25 .28 .52
Warren ............ 13,337 1.75 1.89 1.68
Coffee ............ 13,406 2.00 2.32 1.68
Hardeman .......... 13,565 1.60 1.86 1.11
Fayette ........... 13,577 2.50 2.48 1.11
Haywood ........... 13,934 2.50 2.52 1.69
Williamson ........ 14,064 2.33 2.96 1.71
*264
Present total Present total Proposed total
representation representation representation
using using J. ( appellants' plan ),
1950 voting J. Clark's Harlan's using J. Harlan's
County population formula formula formula
Hamblen ........... 14,090 1.10 1.07 1.67
Franklin .......... 14,297 1.75 1.95 1.73
Lauderdale ........ 14,413 2.50 2.45 1.73
Bedford ........... 14,732 2.00 1.45 1.74
Lincoln ........... 15,092 2.50 2.72 1.77
Henry ............. 15,465 2.83 2.76 1.73
Lawrence .......... 15,847 2.00 2.22 1.81
Giles ............. 15,935 2.25 2.54 1.81
Tipton ............ 15,944 3.00 1.68 1.13
Robertson ......... 16,456 2.83 2.62 1.85
Wilson ............ 16,459 3.00 3.03 1.21
Carroll ........... 16,472 2.83 2.88 1.82
Hawkins ........... 16,900 3.00 1.93 1.82
Putnam ............ 17,071 1.70 2.50 1.86
Campbell .......... 17,477 .76 1.40 1.94
Roane ............. 17,639 1.75 1.26 1.30
Weakley ........... 18,007 2.33 2.63 1.85
Bradley ........... 18,273 1.25 1.67 1.92
McMinn ............ 18,347 1.75 1.97 1.92
Obion ............. 18,434 2.00 2.30 1.94
Dyer .............. 20,062 2.00 2.36 2.32
Sumner ............ 20,143 2.33 3.56 2.54
Carter ............ 23,303 1.10 1.48 2.55
Greene ............ 23,649 1.93 2.05 2.68
Maury ............. 24,556 2.25 3.81 2.85
Rutherford ........ 25,316 2.00 3.02 2.39
Montgomery ........ 26,284 3.00 3.73 3.06
Gibson ............ 29,832 5.00 5.00 2.86
Blount ............ 30,353 1.60 2.12 2.19
Anderson .......... 33,990 1.25 1.30 3.62
Washington ........ 36,967 1.93 2.65 3.45
Madison ........... 37,245 3.50 4.87 3.69
Sullivan .......... 55,712 3.00 4.07 5.57
Hamilton .......... 131,971 6.00 6.00 15.09
Knox .............. 140,559 7.25 8.96 15.21
Davidson .......... 211,930 12.50 12.93 21.57
Shelby ............ 312,345 15.50 16.85 31.59
*265 MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring.
The separate writings of my dissenting and concurring Brothers stray so far from the subject of today's decision as to convey, I think, a distressingly inaccurate impression of what the Court decides. For that reason, I think it appropriate, in joining the opinion of the Court, to emphasize in a few words what the opinion does and does not say.
The Court today decides three things and no more: "(a) that the court possessed jurisdiction of the subject matter; (b) that a justiciable cause of action is stated upon which appellants would be entitled to appropriate relief; and (c) . . . that the appellants have standing to challenge the Tennessee apportionment statutes." Ante, pp. 197-198.
The complaint in this case asserts that Tennessee's system of apportionment is utterly arbitrary—without any possible justification in rationality. The District Court did not reach the merits of that claim, and this Court quite properly expresses no view on the subject. Contrary to the suggestion of my Brother HARLAN, the Court does not say or imply that "state legislatures must be so structured as to reflect with approximate equality the voice of every voter." Post, p. 332. The Court does not say or imply that there is anything in the Federal Constitution "to prevent a State, acting not irrationally, from choosing any electoral legislative structure it thinks best suited to the interests, temper, and customs of its people." Post, p. 334. And contrary to the suggestion of my Brother DOUGLAS, the Court most assuredly does not decide the question, "may a State weight the vote of one county or one district more heavily than it weights the vote in another?" Ante, p. 244.
In MacDougall v. Green, 335 U. S. 281 , the Court held that the Equal Protection Clause does not "deny a State the power to assure a proper diffusion of political initiative *266 as between its thinly populated counties and those having concentrated masses, in view of the fact that the latter have practical opportunities for exerting their political weight at the polls not available to the former." 335 U. S., at 284 . In case after case arising under the Equal Protection Clause the Court has said what it said again only last Term—that "the Fourteenth Amendment permits the States a wide scope of discretion in enacting laws which affect some groups of citizens differently than others." McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 425 . In case after case arising under that Clause we have also said that "the burden of establishing the unconstitutionality of a statute rests on him who assails it." Metropolitan Casualty Ins. Co. v. Brownell, 294 U. S. 580, 584 .
Today's decision does not turn its back on these settled precedents. I repeat, the Court today decides only: (1) that the District Court possessed jurisdiction of the subject matter; (2) that the complaint presents a justiciable controversy; (3) that the appellants have standing. My Brother CLARK has made a convincing prima facie showing that Tennessee's system of apportionment is in fact utterly arbitrary—without any possible justification in rationality. My Brother HARLAN has, with imagination and ingenuity, hypothesized possibly rational bases for Tennessee's system. But the merits of this case are not before us now. The defendants have not yet had an opportunity to be heard in defense of the State's system of apportionment; indeed, they have not yet even filed an answer to the complaint. As in other cases, the proper place for the trial is in the trial court, not here.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, whom MR. JUSTICE HARLAN joins, dissenting.
The Court today reverses a uniform course of decision established by a dozen cases, including one by which the very claim now sustained was unanimously rejected *267 only five years ago. The impressive body of rulings thus cast aside reflected the equally uniform course of our political history regarding the relationship between population and legislative representation—a wholly different matter from denial of the franchise to individuals because of race, color, religion or sex. Such a massive repudiation of the experience of our whole past in asserting destructively novel judicial power demands a detailed analysis of the role of this Court in our constitutional scheme. Disregard of inherent limits in the effective exercise of the Court's "judicial Power" not only presages the futility of judicial intervention in the essentially political conflict of forces by which the relation between population and representation has time out of mind been and now is determined. It may well impair the Court's position as the ultimate organ of "the supreme Law of the Land" in that vast range of legal problems, often strongly entangled in popular feeling, on which this Court must pronounce. The Court's authority—possessed of neither the purse nor the sword—ultimately rests on sustained public confidence in its moral sanction. Such feeling must be nourished by the Court's complete detachment, in fact and in appearance, from political entanglements and by abstention from injecting itself into the clash of political forces in political settlements.
A hypothetical claim resting on abstract assumptions is now for the first time made the basis for affording illusory relief for a particular evil even though it foreshadows deeper and more pervasive difficulties in consequence. The claim is hypothetical and the assumptions are abstract because the Court does not vouchsafe the lower courts—state and federal—guidelines for formulating specific, definite, wholly unprecedented remedies for the inevitable litigations that today's umbrageous disposition is bound to stimulate in connection with politically motivated reapportionments in so many States. In *268 such a setting, to promulgate jurisdiction in the abstract is meaningless. It is as devoid of reality as "a brooding omnipresence in the sky," for it conveys no intimation what relief, if any, a District Court is capable of affording that would not invite legislatures to play ducks and drakes with the judiciary. For this Court to direct the District Court to enforce a claim to which the Court has over the years consistently found itself required to deny legal enforcement and at the same time to find it necessary to withhold any guidance to the lower court how to enforce this turnabout, new legal claim, manifests an odd— indeed an esoteric—conception of judicial propriety. One of the Court's supporting opinions, as elucidated by commentary, unwittingly affords a disheartening preview of the mathematical quagmire (apart from divers judicially inappropriate and elusive determinants) into which this Court today catapults the lower courts of the country without so much as adumbrating the basis for a legal calculus as a means of extrication. Even assuming the indispensable intellectual disinterestedness on the part of judges in such matters, they do not have accepted legal standards or criteria or even reliable analogies to draw upon for making judicial judgments. To charge courts with the task of accommodating the incommensurable factors of policy that underlie these mathematical puzzles is to attribute, however flatteringly, omnicompetence to judges. The Framers of the Constitution persistently rejected a proposal that embodied this assumption and Thomas Jefferson never entertained it.
Recent legislation, creating a district appropriately described as "an atrocity of ingenuity," is not unique. Considering the gross inequality among legislative electoral units within almost every State, the Court naturally shrinks from asserting that in districting at least substantial equality is a constitutional requirement enforceable *269 by courts. [*] Room continues to be allowed for weighting. This of course implies that geography, economics, urban-rural conflict, and all the other non-legal factors which have throughout our history entered into political districting are to some extent not to be ruled out in the undefined vista now opened up by review in the federal courts of state reapportionments. To some extent—aye, there's the rub. In effect, today's decision empowers the courts of the country to devise what should constitute the proper composition of the legislatures of the fifty States. If state courts should for one reason or another find themselves unable to discharge this task, the duty of doing so is put on the federal courts or on this Court, if State views do not satisfy this Court's notion of what is proper districting.
We were soothingly told at the bar of this Court that we need not worry about the kind of remedy a court could effectively fashion once the abstract constitutional right to have courts pass on a state-wide system of electoral districting is recognized as a matter of judicial rhetoric, because legislatures would heed the Court's admonition. This is not only a euphoric hope. It implies a sorry *270 confession of judicial impotence in place of a frank acknowledgement that there is not under our Constitution a judicial remedy for every political mischief, for every undesirable exercise of legislative power. The Framers carefully and with deliberate forethought refused so to enthrone the judiciary. In this situation, as in others of like nature, appeal for relief does not belong here. Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate. In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives. In any event there is nothing judicially more unseemly nor more self-defeating than for this Court to make in terrorem pronouncements, to indulge in merely empty rhetoric, sounding a word of promise to the ear, sure to be disappointing to the hope.
This is the latest in the series of cases in which the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment have been invoked in federal courts as restrictions upon the power of the States to allocate electoral weight among the voting populations of their various geographical subdivisions. [1] The present action, which *271 comes here on appeal from an order of a statutory three-judge District Court dismissing amended complaints seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, challenges the provisions of Tenn. Code Ann., 1955 §§ 3-101 to 3-109, which apportion state representative and senatorial seats among Tennessee's ninety-five counties.
The original plaintiffs, citizens and qualified voters entitled to vote for members of the Tennessee Legislature in the several counties in which they respectively reside, bring this action in their own behalf and "on behalf of all other voters in the State of Tennessee," or, as they alternatively assert, "on behalf of all qualified voters of their respective counties, and further, on behalf of all voters of the State of Tennessee who are similarly situated." The cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, and the Mayor of Nashville—on his own behalf as a qualified voter and, pursuant to an authorizing resolution by the Nashville City Council, as a representative of all the city's residents—were permitted to intervene as parties plaintiff. [2] The defendants are executive officials charged with statutory duties in connection with state elections. [3]
*272 The original plaintiffs' amended complaint avers, in substance, the following. [4] The Constitution of the State of Tennessee declares that "elections shall be free and equal," provides that no qualifications other than age, citizenship and specified residence requirements shall be attached to the right of suffrage, and prohibits denying to any person the suffrage to which he is entitled except upon conviction of an infamous crime. Art. I, § 5; Art. IV, § 1. It requires an enumeration of qualified voters within every term of ten years after 1871 and an apportionment of representatives and senators among the several counties or districts according to the number of qualified voters in each [5] at the time of each decennial *273 enumeration. Art. II, §§ 4, 5, 6. Notwithstanding these provisions, the State Legislature has not reapportioned itself since 1901. The Reapportionment Act of that year, Tenn. Acts 1901, c. 122, now Tenn. Code Ann., 1955, §§ 3-101 to 3-109, [6] was unconstitutional when enacted, because not preceded by the required enumeration of qualified voters

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/106366. Public record. Not legal advice.