## Facts

- Midland County, Texas was governed by a Commissioners Court consisting of a county judge elected at large and four commissioners elected from four single-member precincts.
- The Commissioners Court exercised broad countywide powers, including setting tax rates, equalizing assessments, issuing bonds, and allocating public funds, with substantial discretion over expenditures.
- The four precincts were extremely malapportioned: one precinct containing nearly all of the City of Midland had about 67,906 people, while three largely rural precincts had about 852, 414, and 828 people.
- County officials acknowledged population was not a major factor in designing the precincts.
- Henry Clifton Avery, Jr. challenged the precincting scheme under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
- Texas courts agreed the scheme was unconstitutional, but suggested local factors (e.g., geography, land area, roads, taxable values) could justify deviations from population equality.

## Issues

1. Whether the Equal Protection Clause requires substantially equal population districts for elections to a local governmental body that exercises general governmental powers over an entire geographic area.
2. Whether considerations such as rural-focused functions, geography, land area, or taxable value can justify extreme population disparities in single-member districts for such a body.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court held, 5–3, that local governmental units with general governmental powers over an entire geographic area may not be apportioned into single-member districts of substantially unequal population.
- The Court treated the actions of county government as state action subject to Fourteenth Amendment limits.
- Because the Commissioners Court performed broad policy and fiscal functions affecting all county residents, it was subject to the “one person, one vote” requirement.
- The Court rejected the argument that a perceived rural emphasis in the body’s work justified giving sparsely populated rural precincts equal representation with a densely populated urban precinct.
- The Court affirmed that population equality need not be mathematically exact, but disparities of the magnitude shown were unconstitutional.

## Legal Principles

- The Equal Protection Clause constrains state power whether exercised directly by the state or through political subdivisions, including counties.
- When an elected local body has general responsibility and power for local affairs across the whole jurisdiction, representative districts must be based on substantially equal population.
- Justifications tied to functional emphasis, geography, land area, roads, or taxable values do not permit gross malapportionment where the body’s powers are general and countywide.
- Limited-purpose governmental entities may present different equal-protection considerations, but general-purpose governing bodies are subject to population-based apportionment norms.

## Conclusion

The Court required Midland County to apportion its commissioners’ precincts on a substantially equal population basis, extending the “one person, one vote” rule to local governing bodies that exercise broad, general governmental authority over all residents of the jurisdiction.


Avery v. Midland Cnty., 390 U.S. 474 (1968)