Supreme Court rules illegal immigrants, other non-citizens can be counted for redistricting

Supreme Court rules illegal immigrants, other non-citizens can be counted for apportionment

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FILE - In this Tuesday, July 7, 2015 file photo immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala who entered the country illegally board a bus after they were released from a family detention center in San Antonio. Women and children are ... more >

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that illegal immigrants and other non-citizens can be counted when states draw their legislative districts, shooting down a challenge by Texas residents who said their own voting power was being diluted.

The ruling does not grant non-citizens power to vote, but says the principle of “one person, one vote” doesn’t require localities to only count those who are actually eligible to vote.

Justice Ruth Baden Ginsburg, writing for the court, said even though only eligible voters are supposed to cast ballots, elected officials represent all people within their districts, and it is that act of representation, not the election itself, that the boundaries are drawn to.

“As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible or registered to vote,” she wrote. “Nonvoters have an important stake in many policy debates — children, their parents, even their grandparents, for example, have a stake in a strong public-education system — and in receiving constituent services, such as help navigating public-benefits bureaucracies.”

Texas residents had challenged the way districts were drawn in their state, saying that because they ended up in districts with more eligible voters, their vote counted less than someone in another district.

Because of illegal immigrants, other non-citizens and children under 18 years of age, state legislative districts in Texas can vary by as much as 40 percent.

The process of dividing up districts is known as apportionment.

At the federal level, congressional districts have been drawn based on total population under the strictures of the Fourteenth Amendment.

All 50 states have followed the same rules, though the Constitution wasn’t explicit on the matter.

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