Mr. Beat presents

Supreme Court Briefs

Millington, Tennessee 1961

Charles Baker, a member of the Millington Board  of Aldermen and former mayor of the town, was  

frustrated. For decades, he and his fellow Shelby  County residents had felt helpless as they got  

less and less government assistance and less and  less representation in government. You see, Shelby  

County is part of the Memphis metropolitan area,  and its population had DRAMATICALLY grown since  

1901. Tennessee, and the entire country overall,  had become MUCH more urban in that timespan.

Wait, why did I randomly bring up the year  1901? Well that was the year the Tennessee  

General Assembly had last redrawn legislative and  congressional districts! Now, the Tennessee State  

Constitution said all districts had to be redrawn  every ten years…ya know, after the census…to make  

it so that every district had as equal number  of people living in it as possible. Well,  

as I said earlier, in the 50 years since the  Tennessee General Assembly last redrew districts,  

the population had shifted in a way that Shelby  County had about ten times as many residents  

as some of the rural districts of the state. The  Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville metropolitan  

areas had 63% of the population of the state  but only 13 of the 33 state senate seats. In  

other words, the votes of rural citizens were  way overrepresented compared to those of urban  

citizens of the state. Baker wasn’t the only  one mad about it, bruh. After the Tennessee  

government refused to redraw districts again after  the 1960 census results, he and a bunch of people  

sued them. Well specifically, they sued Joe Carr,  a state official in charge of Tennessee elections.

Baker argued that the votes of Tennesseans  who lived in urban areas didn’t count nearly  

as much as the votes of Tennesseans  who lived in rural areas. Simply put,  

the Tennessee legislature didn’t reflect the  state's population, and this went against the  

Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth  Amendment of the Constitution, and dangit,  

every vote should be counted equally!  One person, one vote, and stuff.

Well Carr was like “heh, heh, heh” because  he had precedent on his side. You see,  

the Supreme Court had historically not  got involved with what state governments  

did when it came to “political questions.”  Political questions are ones that involve,  

ya know, politics, or how power is distributed,  and the Court had consistently tried to stay  

as apolitical as possible…meaning if a case  was too political they didn’t want to touch it.

But come on. Almost everything  is political, for crying out.

Anyway, the Supreme Court had brought up  what became known as the “political question  

doctrine” in several cases before 1961. The  most relevant case to the Tennessee government’s  

shenanigans was Colegrove v. Green,  decided in 1946. In it, the Supreme Court  

ruled that it couldn’t step in after the  Illinois government hadn’t redrawn ITS  

congressional districts since 1901, which led to  rural votes counting way more than urban votes.

And I call not drawing up new districts  “shenanigans” not only since it went  

against the Tennessee Constitution, but in the  context of the Civil Rights Movement. You see,  

the Tennessee government knew what it  was doing. It was giving more power to  

the rural parts of the state because those  parts were more “white,” and it was giving  

less power to the urban parts of the  state which had more people of color.

Well, the U.S. District Court for the Middle  District of Tennessee dismissed the lawsuit,  

saying it couldn’t do anything because it was  a political question and citing the Colegrove  

case. So, Baker appealed to the Supreme Court,  and boy were they nervous to take it on because  

they knew whatever they decided would be a big  freaking deal, but they agreed to anyway, hearing  

oral arguments on April 19th and 20th, 1961.  That’s right, TWO DAYS. And apparently that wasn’t  

long enough, because the justices just couldn’t  settle on an answer to the question: “Should we,  

as the Supreme Court, have the power to step in  over questions of legislative apportionment?” They  

argued back and forth, with justices Hugo Black,  William Douglas, Earl Warren, and William Brennan  

on the “yes” side and Felix Frankfurter, John  Harlan, and Tom Clark on the “no” side. Justices  

Potter Stewart and Charles Evans Whittaker  were the swing votes. They just didn’t know  

what side to choose, man. They DID know that if  they said “yes,” the implications would be huge.

The pressure was too much for Whittaker, so  he disappeared. Seriously. He left Washington,  

D.C. and retreated to a cabin in a remote Michigan  forest. But solitude didn’t improve his health  

much, and he eventually suffered a nervous  breakdown and apparently became suicidal.

Whitaker did return to the Court when  they reconvened in the fall. They heard  

more oral arguments on October 9th. Flash forward  

to March 1962 and Frankfurter had convinced  Whittaker to join the “no” side. However,  

by that time, Whittaker’s mental health was in  such poor shape that he checked into Walter Reed  

Hospital. He would never return to the Court,  and officially retired from it a few days later.

And here’s the thing, as it turns out,  they didn’t even need Whitaker’s vote  

since not only Potter Stewart, but also  Tom Clark had shifted to the “yes” side.

On March 26th, the Court had announced  that it had sided with Baker. It was  

6-2 since Whittaker’s name was removed from  the dissenting opinions. So yeah, the Court  

ruled that they DID have the authority to rule  on questions of legislative reapportionment.

This, along with other future cases, created  the basis for the ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE doctrine,  

which said that states had to at least try their  very best to divide up their representatives in  

a way that represented ALL citizens equally so  that NO votes counted any more or less than any  

other vote. In other words, the 14th Amendment's  Equal Protection Clause DID imply that every  

vote ought to count equally. Following  this decision and other future decisions,  

most states had to redraw up their  districts to make sure that rural votes  

didn’t count more than urban votes. While this  did lead to much more equal representation,  

one unintended consequence of this decision  was it leading to more gerrymandering,  

which is arguably a bigger problem today than  it ever has been, although the Court did address  

racial gerrymandering in the case Shaw v. Reno.  Yes I have a video about that case. Check it out.

And finally, this case made it so that the Court  would likely be much more busy from now on.  

Before this decision, the Court avoided  getting involved with political questions.  

Now, it was clear oh they gettin’ involved  alright, although justice Brennan did identify  

six situations in which the Court would NOT  look at political questions, and here they are:

(yeah I’m not reading that. You can pause  this and read it if you want to) But yeah,  

basically from now on the Court would jump in on  some kinds of politics in SOME cases, alright?

Baker v. Carr is one of the most important  Supreme Court cases in American history.  

It really opened up the floodgates. Although the  Court has always been at least somewhat political,  

I’d argue this case made it much more  political. I’d also argue that no  

Supreme Court case in American history  has ever tested our justices more so  

than this case. I mean, it led to one justice  having a nervous breakdown, for crying out loud.

I’ll see you for the next  Supreme Court case, jury!

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So this was another landmark Supreme Court case,  which just means it was freaking important…ya  

know, had a lot of impact. Believe it or  not, there are other landmark decisions that  

I have yet to cover for this series. Which one  should I cover next? Let me know down below. Oh,  

and if you’re in school watching this right now  you ought to turn to your teacher and tell them  

they’re doing a wonderful job. It’s  not easy being a teacher. Trust me.