Colegrove v. Green

Colegrove v. Green
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 7–8, 1946
Decided June 10, 1946
Full case nameColegrove et al. v. Green et al.
Citations328 U.S. 549 (more)
66 S. Ct. 1198; 90 L. Ed. 1432
Case history
PriorDismissed, 64 F. Supp. 632 (N.D. Ill. 1946)
Holding
The remedy for unfairness in districting is to secure State legislatures that will apportion properly, or to invoke the ample powers of Congress. The Constitution has many commands that are not enforceable by courts, because they clearly fall outside the conditions and purposes that circumscribe judicial action.
Court membership
Chief Justice
vacant
Associate Justices
Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed
Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas
Frank Murphy · Robert H. Jackson
Wiley B. Rutledge · Harold H. Burton
Case opinions
PluralityFrankfurter, joined by Reed, Burton
ConcurrenceRutledge
DissentBlack, joined by Douglas, Murphy
Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Art. I § 4
Overruled by
Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962)
Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964)

Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549 (1946), was a United States Supreme Court case. Writing for a 4–3 plurality, Justice Felix Frankfurter held that the federal judiciary had no power to interfere with malapportioned Congressional districts.[1][2][3] The Court held that the Elections Clause in Article I, section IV of the U.S. Constitution left to the legislature of each state the authority to establish the time, place, and manner of holding elections for Congressional Representatives, and that only Congress (and thus not the federal judiciary) could determine whether individual state legislatures had fulfilled their responsibility to secure fair representation for citizens.[4]

However, in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) the United States Supreme Court distinguished the Colegrove decision holding that malapportionment claims under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment were not exempt from judicial review under Article IV, Section 4, as the equal protection issue in this case was separate from any political questions.

The "one person, one vote" doctrine which requires electoral districts to be apportioned according to population, thus making each district roughly equal in population, was further cemented in the cases that followed Baker v. Carr, including Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963), which concerned state county districts; Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), which concerned state legislature districts; Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), which concerned U.S. Congressional districts; and Avery v. Midland County, 390 U.S. 474 (1968), which concerned local government districts, a decision which was upheld in Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris, 489 U.S. 688 (1989).[5]

  1. ^ Katz, Ellis. 2006. "Colegrove v. Green." Federalism in America: An Encyclopedia.
  2. ^ Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549 (1946).
  3. ^ See Kim Isaac Eisler, A Justice for All: William J. Brennan, Jr., and the decisions that transformed America, 11, 168 (1993).
  4. ^ Colegrove, 328 U.S. at 554-55.
  5. ^ "The Supreme Court: One-Man, One-Vote, Locally". Time. April 12, 1968. Archived from the original on September 2, 2009. Retrieved May 20, 2010.