what are some examples of reapportionment and redistricting being different?

Answer 1

Reapportionment - The federal government allocates congressional seats to the states on the basis of total population, but has only a limited role to play in the redistricting process after this point. For example, the U.S. Congress can pass laws to regulate the process to an extent and has done so on rare occasion – the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is one notable example.

Redistricting - the federal courts (as well as the state courts), play a major role in the redistricting process in the United States. They have been called upon to develop redistricting standards, to arbitrate redistricting conflicts, and even to draft redistricting plans. In North Carolina, where the Gingles case arose, it meant that multimember districts where blacks were in the minority and had been unable to elect candidates to office had to be replaced with single-member districts where blacks were in the majority. To the rest of the country, and to the state legislatures and commissions who were going to be drawing new districts after the 1990 census, it meant that wherever there was a racial or ethnic minority that was "sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district," the state would have to draw a district for them or risk having the plan thrown out.

Answer 2

The Texas redistricting case that went all the way to the Supreme Court is the best example. Here, reapportionment ended up colliding headon with redistricting.


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The 2003 Texas redistricting refers to a highly controversial congressional redistricting plan appealed to the United States Supreme Court in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. On June 28, 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the statewide redistricting as Constitutional, but struck down Congressional District 23 as racial gerrymandering in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Read more about it in detail at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Texas_redistricting