Two Delaware voters filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in an effort to increase Delaware’s representation in Congress.
The two plaintiffs, David Redlawsk, a professor at the University of Delaware, and Kevin Price, a Delaware resident, argue that Delaware residents are underrepresented in the House, with only one seat for about 991,000 people.
That’s less representation per person than any other state, they say, noting that Montana — with just under 1.1 million residents — has two seats in the House.
“The limitation to 435 seats imposes a serious and avoidable disparity on Delaware voters,” their lawsuit says, adding that “plaintiffs suffer concrete and specific harm from the dilution of their representation in the House.”
They request that a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declare the House’s 435-seat limitation under the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 unconstitutional – and create an additional seat for Delaware, bringing the full House to 436 representatives.
The lawsuit names Lutnick because the Commerce Department oversees the census, whose population count every ten years is used to divvy up House seats. Also named are Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce George Cook, who serves as director of the U.S. Census Bureau, and House Clerk Kevin McCumber.
Redlawsk and Price’s attorney, Andrew Tutt, argues in the lawsuit that the U.S. population is increasing “while the statutory allocation mechanism advances the same total of seats” in the House.
Tutt said that following the 2020 census, that year’s seat distribution split seats among more than 331 million people, “more than three and a half times the 92 million Americans counted in the 1910 census, before the current size of the House was set in 1911, leaving Delaware’s 990,837 residents with just one representative.”
Redlawsk and Price want the court to create an additional House seat for their state in time for the 2028 presidential election.
“Delaware would have two representatives for its 990,837 residents, an average of approximately 495,419 people per representative,” the lawsuit states. “The House would have 436 members. The remedy would give Delaware voters the additional representation their population needs and leave the allocations of the other 49 states intact.”
The lawsuit asks that if Congress does not act on the request, then it asks the court to order that the membership of the House be increased to 436 members.
The Commerce Department and the House clerk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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