Go to next casePopulation was not always the basis for the apportionment of seats to the state legislatures. Rather, the states were divided into districts based on land area. Originally, this gave a slight advantage to citizens of rural districts. With less people living in them, each person's vote had greater weight. With the growth of cities, this advantage had grown to a huge disproportion by the 1960s. Justice Tom C. Clark cited in his opinion that two-thirds of the members of the state Senate were elected by one-third of the population and two-thirds of the members of the House were elected by forty percent of the population. This was most noticable in the more urbanized areas. It was this inequality in representation that motivated the "city dwellers" to bring a suit to the federal courts against their states on the grounds that the unequal distribution of "voting power" infringed on their 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law. The federal courts ruled that they had no jurisdiction over this legislative matter. The Supreme Court then overturned this decision and ruled only that this matter was "justicable" shattering the idea that there were political questions outside the courts jurisdiction.
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