Jefferson County voters sue Alabama over legislative districts that give rural counties 15 times the electoral weight of Birmingham, directly enabled by the Supreme Court's Baker v. Carr ruling

A group of Jefferson County voters including M.O. Sims and David J. Vann filed a federal lawsuit challenging Alabama's legislative apportionment, which had not changed since the state's 1901 constitution despite Birmingham growing from 38,000 to 634,000 residents. Alabama's constitution itself required reapportionment after each census, but the rural-dominated legislature had defied that mandate for six decades. The suit came just five months after Baker v. Carr opened federal courts to redistricting claims.