14
Opinion of the Court
evolved though a line of cases into a strictly enforced requirement that a State " 'make a good-faith effort to achieve precise mathematical equality' " among the populations of congressional districts. See Montana, supra, at 460, quoting Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, 394 U. S. 526, 530-531 (1969) (disparities between congressional districts in Missouri held unconstitutional); see also Karcher v. Daggett, supra (1% disparity between population of New Jersey districts held unconstitutional). Returning to Montana's challenge to Congress' apportionment decision, we noted that the Wesberry line of cases all involved intrastate disparities in the population of voting districts that had resulted from a State's redistricting decisions, whereas Montana had challenged interstate disparities resulting from the actions of Congress. Montana, supra, at 460.
We found this difference to be significant beyond the simple fact that Congress was due more deference than the States in this area. Wesberry required a State to make "a good-faith effort to achieve precise mathematical equality" in the size of voting districts. Kirkpatrick, supra, at 530-531. While this standard could be applied easily to intrastate districting because there was no "theoretical incompatibility entailed in minimizing both the absolute and the relative differences" in the sizes of particular voting districts, we observed that it was not so easily applied to interstate districting decisions where there was a direct tradeoff between absolute and relative differences in size. Montana, supra, at 461-462. Finding that Montana demanded that we choose between several measures of inequality in order to hold the Wesberry standard applicable to congressional apportionment decisions, we concluded that "[n]either mathematical analysis nor constitutional interpretation provide[d] a conclusive answer" upon which to base that choice. Montana, supra, at 463.
We further found that the Constitution itself, by guaranteeing a minimum of one representative for each State, made it virtually impossible in interstate apportionment to achieve
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