Redistricting in AP US Government

Reapportionment hands out seats, redistricting draws the lines

Two steps happen after every census, and they're easy to blur. Reapportionment divides the House's 435 seats among the states by population, so a growing state can gain seats and a shrinking one can lose them. Redistricting comes next. States with more than one House seat draw congressional district lines within their borders, while a state with a single seat elects its representative statewide.

If a question says a state gained two House seats after the census, that's reapportionment. If it says the state then redrew its district boundaries, that's redistricting. A state can redistrict even when its seat count stays the same, because people move around within the state and districts have to be rebalanced.

Most states let the legislature draw the maps, so the party in control of the statehouse usually controls the lines. Some states, including California and Arizona, hand the job to independent commissions to reduce that control.

When redrawing lines turns into gerrymandering

Redistricting itself is required and neutral. Gerrymandering is redistricting done to rig the outcome, usually by packing (concentrating the other party's voters into a few districts they win by huge margins) or cracking (splitting them across many districts so they fall short everywhere). If a stem describes lines drawn "to consolidate opposition voters" or "to dilute" a group's votes, the answer is about gerrymandering, even when the word "redistricting" appears in the question.

This is where the term reaches into Topic 5.9, Congressional Elections, in Unit 5. Maps drawn to create safe seats feed the incumbency advantage, since a district built for one party rarely has a competitive general election. The real contest moves to the primary, which pulls candidates toward their party's base.

That effect carries into Topic 2.3, Congressional Behavior, in Unit 2, which asks how election processes shape what Congress does. A member from a safe district has little reason to compromise and more reason to vote with the party, so gerrymandering is a standard explanation for partisan voting, polarization, and gridlock. A multiple-choice answer may link "safe districts" to "increased polarization" or "fewer competitive elections."

Baker v. Carr and Shaw v. Reno raise two different equal protection claims

Both are required cases, and both rest on the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, but they challenge different problems.

Baker v. Carr (1962) dealt with malapportionment. Tennessee hadn't redrawn its state legislative districts in decades, so rural districts with few people had the same representation as crowded urban ones. The Court held that redistricting challenges are justiciable, meaning federal courts can hear them instead of dismissing them as political questions. That opened the door to the "one person, one vote" principle the Court developed in later cases.

Shaw v. Reno (1993) dealt with race. North Carolina drew an oddly shaped majority-minority district (one where a racial minority makes up most voters) to increase Black representation. The Court ruled that districts drawn mainly on the basis of race must pass strict scrutiny, so the state needs a compelling interest and a narrowly tailored map. This connects to Unit 3's material on balancing majority and minority rights, and a question may ask you to explain the tension between protecting minority representation and treating race as a suspect classification.

There's also a limit on what courts will hear. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Court held that claims of partisan gerrymandering are political questions federal courts can't resolve. Racial gerrymandering and unequal population can still be challenged in federal court, while purely partisan line-drawing generally can't.

Using redistricting on the free-response questions

Redistricting fits several free-response tasks:

• SCOTUS Comparison (Question 3): If a non-required redistricting case appears, Baker v. Carr or Shaw v. Reno could provide a relevant comparison. A strong answer names the shared clause (Equal Protection), states whether the issue is population equality or racial classification, and explains why the holdings match or differ.
• Concept Application (Question 1): A scenario about a legislature redrawing maps asks you to explain an effect, such as fewer competitive races, stronger incumbency advantage, or a more polarized House.
• Quantitative Analysis (Question 2): District-level voting data or a map showing where voters live may help identify packing or cracking. A table comparing a party's statewide vote share with its share of House seats can show a gap between votes and seats, but it can't establish the cause, since things like where voters happen to live can also produce a gap.

A common mistake in all of these is calling every redrawn map a gerrymander. Keep the neutral process (redistricting) separate from the manipulation (gerrymandering), and keep both separate from reapportionment.