Chen v. City of Houston
The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Houston's 1997 city council redistricting plan, leaving in place lower-court rulings that rejected claims of racial gerrymandering and unequal district populations.
Justice Thomas dissented from the denial, arguing the Court should have used the case to resolve a split among federal appeals courts over whether districts must be equalized by total population or by the number of voting-age citizens, a question he said was urgent given the upcoming 2000 census.
How it got here: A federal trial court granted summary judgment to the city; the Fifth Circuit affirmed; the residents asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, which it declined.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Houston residents sued the city, claiming its 1997 redrawing of single-member city council districts amounted to racial gerrymandering and violated the one-person, one-vote principle. They argued the city placed a mostly white newly annexed suburb into a district in a way that undersized minority-heavy districts, diluting the votes of people in larger, mostly white districts.
The question before the Court
When cities draw election districts of roughly equal size, should they count total population or only voting-age citizens?
Why it matters
Cities and states drawing new districts after each census still don't have Supreme Court guidance on whether to equalize districts by total population or voting-age population, a choice that can shift political power between communities with different mixes of children, noncitizens, and eligible voters. Houston's residents challenging the plan get no further review.
What changes now
Because the Court denied certiorari, the Fifth Circuit's ruling against the Houston residents stands and the city's 1997 districting plan remains in effect. The underlying legal question — whether districts must be equalized by total population or by voting-age population — remains unresolved nationally, and the circuit split identified by Justice Thomas continues until the Court agrees to take up a similar case.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Houston's redistricting plan was constitutional or which population measure — total population or voting-age population — the one-person, one-vote principle requires. The denial of certiorari means the lower court's ruling stands, but it sets no nationwide rule and resolves no circuit split.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“But as long as we sustain the one-person, one-vote principle, we have an obligation to explain to States and localities what it actually means.”Thomas argues the Court should clarify what population measure the one-person, one-vote rule requires.
Justice Thomas argued the Court should have granted certiorari because lower courts disagree on whether one-person, one-vote requires equalizing districts by total population or by citizen voting-age population. He noted Houston's districts were within the normal 10% deviation using total population but allegedly deviated 20% to 32.5% using voting-age population, and urged the Court to resolve this before nationwide redistricting using 2000 census data.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The one-person, one-vote principle, from Reynolds v. Sims (1964), requires that election districts be made as nearly equal in population as practical, but the Court has never said whether 'population' means everyone living in a district or only the citizens old enough to vote.
- Under existing case law, a district plan with less than a 10% deviation in population between districts is presumed constitutional, while a larger deviation creates a presumption that the state or city must justify.
- Houston's 1997 council districts had less than a 10% deviation when measured by total population, but the deviation was allegedly as high as 20% to 32.5% when measured by citizen voting-age population instead.
- Federal appeals courts disagreed on how to handle this gap: the Fifth Circuit (which decided this case) and the Fourth Circuit treated the choice of which population figure to use as a political decision courts should not second-guess, while the Ninth Circuit suggested that basing districts only on voting population, rather than total population, could itself be unconstitutional.
- Because this question would recur nationwide as jurisdictions redrew districts using new 2000 census data, the dissent argued the Court should resolve it now rather than wait for the disagreement among the circuits to deepen further.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Reynolds v. Sims (377 U.S. 533)
Cited as the source of the one-person, one-vote requirement that districts be as equal in population as practicable.
Reaffirms Brown v. Thomson (462 U.S. 835)
Cited for the rule that a population deviation over 10% creates a presumption of discrimination needing justification.