Chen v. City of Houston
The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Houston's 1997 city council redistricting plan, leaving in place a lower court ruling that upheld the map.
Justice Thomas dissented from the denial, arguing the Court should have used the case to clarify whether districts must be equalized by total population or by citizen voting-age population, a question lower courts have answered differently.
How it got here: A federal trial court granted summary judgment for Houston; the Fifth Circuit affirmed; the residents asked the Supreme Court to review, which it declined.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Houston residents sued the city, claiming its 1997 redistricting plan for single-member city council districts amounted to racial gerrymandering and violated the one-person, one-vote rule. The dispute centered on how the city placed the newly annexed, mostly white Kingwood suburb and whether "minority" districts were deliberately drawn with smaller populations than "majority" white districts.
The question before the Court
When cities draw voting districts, should they equalize total population or citizen voting-age population instead?
Why it matters
Cities and states redrawing districts after each census still lack a clear answer on which population measure they must equalize. Depending on the measure used, some districts could look constitutionally fine or badly skewed, and residents' voting power can shift substantially based on that unresolved choice.
What changes now
Because certiorari was denied, the Fifth Circuit's ruling upholding Houston's districting plan stands, and no nationwide rule was set. The disagreement among circuits over whether to use total population or citizen voting-age population remains unresolved, meaning other jurisdictions may continue to face inconsistent legal treatment on this question until the Court takes up a similar case.
What this does not decide
Because the Court denied certiorari, it did not rule on Houston's districting plan, on the racial gerrymandering claim, or on which population measure jurisdictions must use to satisfy one-person, one-vote requirements. Only Justice Thomas's dissent addresses these issues, and it is not a ruling of the Court.
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 must clarify what population measure the one-person, one-vote rule requires.
Justice Thomas argued the Court should have granted certiorari because lower courts are split on whether one-person, one-vote requirements are measured by total population or by citizen voting-age population. He noted the Fifth and Fourth Circuits treat this as a political choice unreviewable by courts, while the Ninth Circuit has held using voting-age population could be unconstitutional. He urged resolving this before the 2000 census reshapes districts nationwide.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court's one-person, one-vote rule, first announced in Reynolds v. Sims, requires governments to make a good-faith effort to keep districts nearly equal in population, though perfect equality is not required.
- Existing case law treats a population deviation among districts of under 10% as presumptively lawful, while a larger deviation creates a presumption of discrimination that the government must justify.
- The unresolved issue is what counts as 'population' for this calculation: if measured by total population, Houston's plan had less than a 10% deviation, but if measured by citizen voting-age population, the deviation was allegedly 20% to 32.5%.
- Federal appeals courts disagree on this question: the Fifth and Fourth Circuits treat the choice between total population and voting-age population as a political decision courts should not review, while the Ninth Circuit has held that using voting-age population instead of total population could be unconstitutional.
- Because the full Court declined to take up the case, this circuit split over which population measure applies was left unresolved.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Reynolds v. Sims (377 U.S. 533)
Thomas relies on this case's rule requiring good-faith efforts to keep district populations nearly equal.