The Supreme Court’s new Term starts today and it promises to be a blockbuster. The Justices have already agreed to hear important cases on affirmative action, public sector unions, and the death penalty, with abortion and voter ID cases likely to also be on the agenda. But, perhaps the most important case this term, or maybe any term since Bush v. Gore, is Evenwel v. Abbott.
In this case, the Supreme Court will wrestle with a fundamental political issue: for purposes of redistricting in state and local elections (and probably federal as well), do states need to count all the people who live in the districts or just eligible voters? The answer has major practical implications for each political party and for our country as a whole. It also raises a difficult and core issue of political philosophy: whom do our elected leaders represent?