Baker v. Carr

Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court holding that legislative redistricting claims are justiciable under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, opening federal courts to hear such cases for the first time. The case arose from a challenge to Tennessee's legislative districts, which had not been redrawn since 1901, and in a majority opinion by Justice William Brennan the Court rejected the state's argument that redistricting was a nonjusticiable political question, remanding the case for further proceedings over Justice Felix Frankfurter's dissent. The decision set the precedent that led to the Court's 1964 one person, one vote rulings in Wesberry v. Sanders and Reynolds v. Sims requiring roughly equal populations across electoral districts.