Reynolds v. Sims,
377 U.S. 533 (1964)
The Court held that a state may not elect one of the two houses of a state legislature the way the United States Senate is elected: on the basis of political units, rather than population.
In a companion case, Lucas v. Forty-Fourth General Assembly, the Court held unconstitutional a Colorado apportionment that had recently been overwhelmingly approved by the state's voters in a referendum, including majorities in every political subdivision of the state.
Although the Court asserted that the "fundamental principle of representative government in this country is one of equal representation for equal numbers of people," this "was not the colonial system, it was not the system chosen for the national government by the Constitution, it was not the system exclusively or even predominately practiced by the states at the time of adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it [was] not predominantly practiced by the states" when the cases were decided.
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