Does Tennessee's dual-majority requirement for city-county consolidation violate 'one person, one vote'?

Plain-English summary

Tennessee gives counties two different ways to merge with their largest city into a single government: the Metropolitan Government Act (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-1-101 et seq.) and the newer Charter Government Unification Act (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-21-101 et seq.). Both Acts require the same kind of vote: a single countywide referendum in which the consolidation passes only if it gets a majority inside the principal city AND a separate majority among the voters in the county outside that city. That second group includes residents of any smaller incorporated municipalities within the county.

Rep. Ulysses Jones asked whether that dual-majority requirement violates the "one person, one vote" principle from Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962). His specific concern was a proposed Memphis-Shelby County unification, in which voters in the smaller Shelby County municipalities (Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland, Millington, Arlington) would help decide the fate of a charter that would unify Memphis with Shelby County.

AG Cooper concluded the dual-majority structure is constitutionally valid. The Office had reached the same conclusion in a 1997 opinion (Op. Tenn. Att'y Gen. 97-096), which was attached to and reaffirmed by this 2010 opinion. The reasoning is that Baker v. Carr and Gray v. Sanders governed recurring elections for legislative office, where equal weight per voter inside a single geographical unit is the constitutional touchstone. A single referendum on whether to create a consolidated government is structurally different. In Town of Lockport v. Citizens for Community Action at the Local Level, Inc., 430 U.S. 259 (1977), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York scheme requiring separate majorities of city voters and non-city county voters to approve a new county charter. The Lockport Court reasoned that the two groups had different and potentially opposing interests in the consolidation, and that a legislative judgment requiring separate consent from each group was a valid response to that reality. Tennessee's Unification Act and Metropolitan Act use the same structure and rest on the same legislative judgment.

The takeaway: dual-majority charter referendums are constitutionally distinct from district-based elections for representatives. The "one person, one vote" rule does not require that every vote in the consolidated referendum weigh equally; the rule for consolidation referendums is the "different interests" framework under Lockport.

Currency note

This opinion was issued in 2010. Subsequent statutory amendments, court decisions, or later AG opinions may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current legal advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, deadline, or remedy mentioned here.

The constitutional doctrine in Lockport remains binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent and Tennessee's statutory scheme remained in place after 2010. The Memphis-Shelby County consolidation referendum was placed on the ballot and ultimately failed at the polls in November 2010 (the city of Memphis voted yes, the county outside Memphis voted no, and the dual-majority requirement defeated it). Any present consolidation question should be analyzed against the current statutes and the current state of the local political landscape.

Common questions

Q: What is "one person, one vote"?
A: The constitutional rule, articulated in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), and Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963), that in elections for legislative bodies, every vote inside the same district must carry the same weight. Apportionment that gives some voters' ballots more practical effect than others' violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Q: Why doesn't that rule apply to a city-county consolidation referendum?
A: Because one-person-one-vote governs recurring elections for legislative office, where the question is how representatives are chosen for that body. A consolidation referendum is a one-time vote on whether to create a new local government at all. The U.S. Supreme Court treated this structural difference as constitutionally significant in Town of Lockport, holding that a state can require separate majorities from groups with distinct interests in the outcome.

Q: How is the dual-majority structure different from gerrymandering?
A: Gerrymandering involves drawing district lines that dilute one group's votes inside a single election. The dual-majority structure does not dilute any vote; every city voter's ballot counts equally with every other city voter, and every non-city voter's ballot counts equally with every other non-city voter. What it does is give each subgroup an independent veto. The Equal Protection rule against vote dilution does not reach that structural choice.

Q: What "different interests" are the city and non-city voters supposed to have?
A: City residents typically pay city property taxes and receive city services. Non-city residents (including smaller-municipality residents) typically pay no city property tax and rely on county or smaller-city services. A consolidation often shifts service-delivery responsibilities and tax burdens in ways that affect each group differently. Lockport recognized that the legislature can reasonably treat these as distinct interests that each deserve protection.

Q: Does this mean smaller-municipality voters in Shelby County (Bartlett, Collierville, etc.) get a vote on a Memphis-Shelby consolidation?
A: Yes. Under the Unification Act, all county residents outside the principal city, including residents of smaller incorporated municipalities, vote together as the second electorate. The opinion notes that this is the statutory scheme and that the U.S. Supreme Court's Lockport analysis encompasses it.

Q: Has Tennessee's AG Office addressed this before?
A: Yes. The 1997 Tennessee AG opinion (Op. Tenn. Att'y Gen. 97-096) reached the same conclusion, and the 2010 opinion reaffirms it.

Background and statutory framework

Tennessee has two parallel city-county consolidation frameworks:

Metropolitan Government Act (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-1-101 et seq.): The older framework, under which Nashville-Davidson County, Hartsville-Trousdale County, and Lynchburg-Moore County consolidated. Under § 7-2-106(d), a consolidated charter must receive a majority of votes in the principal city AND a separate majority among voters in the county outside the principal city.

Charter Government Unification Act (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-21-101 et seq.): A newer framework, providing similar mechanisms with somewhat different procedural details. Under § 7-21-205(e), the same dual-majority requirement applies.

Both Acts reflect Tennessee's policy preference that consolidation should be entered into only with mutual consent of the two voter groups whose governments are being merged. A simple county-wide majority would let the principal city's larger voting population overwhelm rural and small-municipality voters, who would then see their property tax base absorbed into the consolidated government without their consent. The dual-majority requirement is a structural protection against that outcome.

The leading constitutional case is Town of Lockport v. Citizens for Community Action at the Local Level, Inc., 430 U.S. 259 (1977). New York had a similar scheme for county charter revisions, requiring separate majorities of city voters and non-city county voters. A group of non-city residents challenged the scheme as a violation of one-person-one-vote, arguing that their votes counted more (because their smaller electorate had veto power) and city voters' counted less. The Supreme Court rejected the challenge. Justice Stewart's opinion distinguished elections for legislative office from a consolidation referendum on the ground that the latter involves a one-time structural question, not the ongoing representation problem the apportionment cases addressed. The Court held that New York's "legislative judgment that residents of the principal city and remaining residents of the county have different and potentially opposing interests in the adoption of the unified government" was rational and sufficient to support the dual-majority requirement.

The 2010 AG opinion applies the same analysis to Tennessee's parallel statutory schemes. Because both the Unification Act and the Metropolitan Act mirror the New York scheme upheld in Lockport, both survive Equal Protection scrutiny. The 1997 AG opinion (Op. Tenn. Att'y Gen. 97-096) had reached the same conclusion and is reaffirmed.

The 2010 question arose in the context of a serious Memphis-Shelby County consolidation effort that placed a charter on the November 2010 ballot. The dual-majority structure was the reason the consolidation ultimately failed: voters in the city of Memphis approved it, but voters in Shelby County outside Memphis rejected it. The structural reality the AG opinion describes (different and potentially opposing interests) played out in the actual vote.

Citations and references

Statutes:

• Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-21-101 et seq. (Charter Government Unification Act)
• Tenn. Code Ann. § 7-21-205(e) (dual-majority requirement under Unification Act)
• Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-1-101 et seq. (Metropolitan Government Act)
• Tenn. Code Ann. § 7-2-106(d) (dual-majority requirement under Metropolitan Act)

Constitutional provisions:

• U.S. Const. amend. XIV (Equal Protection Clause)

Cases:

• Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962)
• Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963)
• Town of Lockport v. Citizens for Community Action at the Local Level, Inc., 430 U.S. 259 (1977)

Related Tennessee AG opinions:

• Op. Tenn. Att'y Gen. 97-096 (July 1, 1997)

Source

• Landing page: https://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/opinions.html
• Original PDF: https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/attorneygeneral/documents/ops/2010/op10-051.pdf

Original opinion text

April 15, 2010

Opinion No. 10-51

Voting under Charter Government Unification Act and Metropolitan Government Act

QUESTION

Under the Charter Government Unification Act, Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-21-101, et seq., (the "Unification Act"), and the Metropolitan Government Act, Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-1-101, et seq., (the "Metropolitan Act"), voters of the principal city in the county and the voters of the area of the county outside the principal city must each vote to adopt a unified government charter. Does this statutory scheme violate the "one man, one vote" principle because it allows voters in the smaller municipalities in Shelby County to vote on adoption of a government charter unifying the city of Memphis and Shelby County?

OPINION

No, this Office has previously opined that this statutory scheme does not violate the "one person, one vote" principle articulated in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

ANALYSIS

This opinion concerns the constitutionality of the voting provisions of the Charter Government Unification Act and the Metropolitan Government Act. Under both of these statutory schemes, the voters of the principal city in the county and the voters of the area of the county outside the principal city, including voters located in smaller municipalities within the county, must each vote to adopt a unified government charter. See Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 7-21-205(e) and § 7-2-106(d). You have asked whether these statutory schemes violate the "one person, one vote" rule articulated in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962). Under this and later cases, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been interpreted to require that, once the geographical unit for which a representative to be chosen is designated, all who participate in the election are to have an equal vote whatever their race, whatever their sex, whatever their occupation, whatever their income and wherever their home may be in that geographical unit. Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 379 (1963).

These cases, however, involve recurring elections for legislative office. By contrast, a vote to adopt the unified county government either under the Unification Act or the Metropolitan Act involves a single referendum in which all the county residents vote on the same issue. The United States Supreme Court, in Town of Lockport v. Citizens for Community Action at the Local Level, Inc., 430 U.S. 259 (1977), has adopted a different standard in analyzing the constitutionality of a referendum vote on a local government charter. In that case, the Supreme Court held that a similar statutory scheme did not violate equal protection principles, because the requirement reflected a valid state legislative judgment that residents of the principal city and remaining residents of the county have different and potentially opposing interests in the adoption of the unified government. Id. at 271-72. Based upon this holding and the similar voting schemes, this Office has previously concluded that the voting schemes in the Unification Act and the Metropolitan Act do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or the parallel provisions of the Tennessee Constitution. Op. Tenn. Att'y Gen. 97-096 (July 1, 1997) (copy attached).

ROBERT E. COOPER, JR.
Attorney General and Reporter

MICHAEL E. MOORE
Solicitor General

JANET M. KLEINFELTER
Deputy Attorney General

Requested by:

The Honorable Ulysses Jones, Jr.
State Representative
35 Legislative Plaza
Nashville, TN 37243-0198