Civil and Human Rights Coalition Responds to Oral Argument in Supreme Court ‘One Person, One Vote’ Case

WASHINGTON – Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement in response to oral argument in the Supreme Court case of Evenwel v. Abbott, a challenge to the well-established “one person, one vote” principle that legislative districts should be based on the total number of people living within them. The challenge seeks to narrow who is counted in redistricting decisions to voting populations, which would result in a lack of representation for countless Americans:

“The values and principles that our nation was built upon dictate that everyone is entitled to representation in our democracy. Abandoning this well-established principle—as the plaintiffs seek to do—would forfeit the right of countless individuals to be represented in our political system.   

Today’s oral argument made it clear that the challengers’ misguided attempt to exclude children and other non-voters from political representation is a clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment. We are heartened by today’s emphasis on the complete impracticality of the challengers’ redistricting ideas, and by the argument’s focus on how a ruling in favor of the challengers would have a harmful effect on children and minority communities.

The plaintiffs in this case—the same forces behind the 2013 case that gutted the Voting Rights Act—seek to pervert one of our democracy’s most precious principles: that everyone counts. We are confident that the Supreme Court will reject the challengers’ argument and reaffirm the long-standing precedent that everyone deserves political representation.”

Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

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