Texas Republicans’ Brazen Plan to Control the State Forever

In the 2016 case Evenwel v. Abbott, two voters went to the Supreme Court to challenge Texas’s state legislative districts. They argued that Texas had violated the equal protection clause by drawing those districts based on total population instead of voting population. By relying on total population, the plaintiffs claimed, the state had diluted their votes by using noncitizens and otherwise ineligible voters to apportion districts.

Their argument ran counter to more than two centuries of historical practice. State legislatures have always used total population to apportion state legislative districts, and the Constitution effectively requires it for congressional districts. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected their complaint and ruled that it was permissible for Texas to use total population to apportion its state legislature.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion to note that he agreed with the ultimate result, but not with the reasoning that the majority used to get there. “In my view, the majority has failed to provide a sound basis for the one-person, one-vote principle because no such basis exists,” he wrote. No other justices joined his opinion.