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91-860.ZS
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NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE et
al. v. MONTANA et al.
appeal from the united states district court for
the district of montana
No. 91-860. Argued March 4, 1992-Decided March 31, 1992
Article I, 2, of the Constitution requires apportionment of Representa-
tives among the States ``according to their respective Numbers.'' A
1941 federal statute provides that after each decennial census ``the
method known as the method of equal proportions'' shall be used to
determine the number of Representatives to which each State is
entitled. Application of that method to the 1990 census caused
Montana to lose one of its two seats in the House of Representatives.
If it had retained both seats, each district would have been closer to
the ideal size of a congressional district than the reapportioned single
district. The State and several of its officials (hereinafter Montana)
sued appropriate federal defendants (hereinafter the Government) in
the District Court, alleging, inter alia, that the existing apportion-
ment method violates Article I, 2. A three-judge court, convened
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2284, granted Montana summary judgment
on this claim, holding the statute unconstitutional because the
variance between the single district's population and that of the ideal
district could not be justified under the ``one-person, one-vote'' stan-
dard developed in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, and other
intrastate districting cases.
Held:Congress exercised its apportionment authority within the limits
dictated by the Constitution. Pp.4-24.
(a)The general admonition in Article I, 2, that apportionment be
made ``according to [the States'] respective numbers'' is constrained
by three constitutional requirements: the number of Representatives
shall not exceed one for every 30,000 persons; each State shall have
at least one Representative; and district boundaries may not cross
state lines. In light of those constraints and the problem of fractional
remainders-i. e., the fractional portion of the number that results
when the State's total population is divided by the population of the
ideal district must either be disregarded or treated as equal to one
Representative because each State must be represented by a whole
number of legislators-Congress has considered and either rejected
or adopted various apportionment methods over the years, the most
recent method tried being the method of equal proportions, also
known as the ``Hill Method.'' A National Academy of Sciences
committee recommended that method as the fairest of the five
methods the committee felt could lead to a workable solution to the
fractional remainder problem. If Congress had chosen the method of
the harmonic mean, also known as the ``Dean Method,'' Montana
would have received a second seat after the 1990 census. Pp.4-13.
(b)This Court rejects the Government's argument that Congress'
selection of any of the alternative apportionment methods presents
a ``political question'' that is not subject to judicial review under the
standards set forth in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 217. Signifi-
cantly, the Government does not suggest that all congressional
decisions relating to apportionment are beyond judicial review, but
merely argues that the District Court erred in concluding that the
Constitution requires the greatest possible equality in the size of
congressional districts, as measured by absolute deviation from ideal
district size. Thus, the controversy here turns on the proper inter-
pretation of the relevant constitutional provisions. As in Baker itself
and the apportionment cases that followed, the political question
doctrine does not place this kind of constitutional interpretation
outside the proper domain of the Judiciary. Pp.14-17.
(c)Congress had ample power to enact the statutory procedure at
issue and to apply the Hill Method after the 1990 census. It is by
no means clear that the facts here establish a violation of the Wes-
berry one-person, one-vote standard. Although Montana's evidence
demonstrated that application of the Dean Method would decrease
the absolute deviation from the ideal district size, it also would
increase the relative difference between the ideal and the size of the
districts both in Montana and in Washington, the only State that
would have lost a Representative under the Dean Method. Wes-
berry's polestar of equal representation does not provide sufficient
guidance to determine what is the better measure of inequality.
Moreover, while subsequent intrastate districting cases have inter-
preted the Wesberry standard as imposing a burden on the States to
make a good-faith effort to achieve precise mathematical equality,
that goal is rendered illusory for the Nation as a whole by the
constraints imposed by Article I, 2: the guarantee of a minimum
of one representative for each State and the need to allocate a fixed
number of indivisible Representatives among 50 States of varying
populations. The constitutional framework that generated the need
for a compromise between the interests of larger and smaller States
must also delegate to Congress a measure of discretion broader than
that accorded to the States, and Congress' apparently good-faith
decision to adopt the Hill Method commands far more deference,
particularly as it was made after decades of experience, experimenta-
tion, and debate, was supported by independent scholars, and has
been accepted for a half century. Pp.17-24.
775 F.Supp. 1358, reversed.
Stevens, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.