SCOTUS will hear a case on 'one person, one vote'

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear a case about the definition of "one person, one vote."

The court has never officially clarified whether the phrase refers to voting districts having the same number of people or the same number of people eligible to vote, The New York Times explains. In a 1964 case, Reynolds v. Sims, the court ruled that voting districts must have similar numbers of people, but the court didn't make clear which definition it meant.

The new case, Evenwel v. Abbott, could affect districts with large populations of non-eligible voters, such as immigrants who are not U.S. citizens, prisoners, and children. Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger, the challengers who brought the case against voting districts for the Texas Senate, explained in their briefing that "there are voters or potential voters in Texas whose Senate votes are worth approximately one and one-half times that of appellants."

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Evenwel and Pfenninger, who are both voters, said in a statement that they want the lawsuit to "compel Texas to equalize the number of eligible voters in each district." Under current laws, most state and local governments define districts based on total populations, rather than eligible voters.