Despite the tumult, the pro-intervention side eventually prevailed. On March 26, 1962, by a vote of 6–2, the Court said what it had never been willing to say before: a state’s legislative district lines can be drawn in such a way that they violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. Significantly, the Court did not rule that Tennessee’s maps were unconstitutional—that, for the time being, would be for the lower courts to decide. But simply by holding that this was a matter for the courts in the first place, it had changed the game.
December 26, 2020. Page 135.
