Wesberry V. Sanders

Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964) was a U.S. Supreme Court case involving U.S. Congressional districts in the state of Georgia. The Court issued its ruling on February 17, 1964. This decision requires each state to draw its U.S. Congressional districts so that they are approximately equal in population.

Nationally, this decision effectively reduced the representation of rural districts in the U.S. Congress. Particularly, the Court held that the population differences among Georgia's congressional districts were so great as to violate the Constitution.

In reaching this landmark decision, the Supreme Court asserted that Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution requires that representatives shall be chosen "by the People of the several States" and shall be "apportioned among the several States...according to their respective Numbers...." These words, the Court held, mean that "as nearly as practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's."

Wesberry and the Court's later "one person, one vote" decisions had an extraordinary impact on the makeup of the House, on the content of public policy, and on electoral politics in general. However, these "one person, one vote" rules do not prevent and have not prevented gerrymandering.

A related case, Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), held that seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must also, to satisfy the Equal Protection Clause, represent districts as equal in population as practicably possible. The federal Senate was unaffected since the Constitution explicitly grants each state two senators.