WI: No Reynolds v. Sims - Effect on politics?

In 1964, the SCOTUS ruled state upper houses had to be set up on the "on man, one voice" principle, overruling plans where senators represented geographical areas.
The effect was to made the major cities have more power in the State and to lessen the power of the rural areas.

So, what if the Supreme Court had decided it was a political question?
 
Actually, the major beneficiaries of *Reynolds v. Sims* were the suburbs and later the exurbs, not the cities (which--except in the Sunbelt--had largely been losing population since World War II). For that reason, the decision did not help liberals nearly as much as some of them had hoped.

It is in any event pretty hard to see *Reynolds v. Sims* going the other way when Harlan was the *only* outright dissenter. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=377&invol=533
 
And in Baker v. Carr (1962), the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff's claims regarding the Tennessee house of representatives which had not been redistricted since 1901 was in fact a 'justiciable' issue with at least potentially remedies. Although I think they probably referred it back to the district court.
http://www.redistrictinginamerica.org/baker/
 
And throughout the South this issue was HUGELY tied up with Civil Rights. And it gets complicated because in the Black Belt in Mississippi and Alabama, a large number of African-American citizens lived in rural areas.

But I really think the bottom line is that a Southern politician of the time is not going to ho out on any limb or do anything for which he or she can be blamed for helping the cause of Civil Rights. And back then it was usually a he. We might argue that things were equal enough, but I kind of think they weren't.
 
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