Cite as: 503 U. S. 442 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
the population of Montana's single district and the ideal district could not be justified under that standard. The majority refused to accord deference to the congressional decision to adopt the method of equal proportions in 1941 because that decision was made without the benefit of this Court's later jurisprudence adopting the "one-person, one-vote" rule. Accordingly, the District Court entered a judgment declaring the statute void and enjoining the Government from effecting any reapportionment of the House of Representatives pursuant to the method of equal proportions.11
Circuit Judge O'Scannlain dissented. After noting that Congress has used four different apportionment formulas during the country's history, and that it is not possible to create 435 districts of equal size when each district must be located entirely within a single State, he concluded that the goal of any apportionment formula must be a " 'practical approximation' " to a population-based allocation.12 He analyzed the two formulae proposed by Montana and concluded that the State had failed to demonstrate that either was better than the one that had been chosen by Congress.13
II
The general admonition in Article I, § 2, that Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States "according to their respective Numbers" is constrained by three requirements. The number of Representatives shall not ex-
11 Ibid.
12 Id., at 1369 (quoting 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 676 (1833)).
13 Montana alleged that the "method of the harmonic mean" or the "method of smallest divisors" would yield a fairer result. Subsequent to the decision below, a District Court in Massachusetts rejected a challenge to Congress' adoption of the method of equal proportions. In that litigation, Massachusetts plaintiffs asserted that the superiority of another method, that of "major fractions," demonstrated that the method of equal proportions was unconstitutional. Massachusetts v. Mosbacher, Civ. Action No. 91-11234-WD (Mass., Feb. 20, 1992).
447
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