Delaware voters sue to expand U.S. House, calling 435-seat limit unconstitutional

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Two Delaware voters have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the century-old limit on the number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives, arguing that the restriction violates the U.S. Constitution by denying their state adequate representation in Congress.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to increase the House’s membership from 435 to 436, giving Delaware one additional district. Delaware currently has one at-large representative, Democrat Sarah McBride, who represents the entire state.

Plaintiffs David Redlawsk and Kevin Price argue that Delaware residents are substantially underrepresented in Congress compared to residents of other states, despite constitutional requirements that House seats be apportioned according to population.

“Delawareans have a lot less power in the U.S. House of Representatives through our one representative than Montanans do through their two representatives,” Redlawsk told WHYY News. “That is just basically unfair. It violates the idea of equal protection and equal voice for voters in Delaware compared to other states.”

Delaware has about 991,000 residents, according to the 2020 census, with one member of Congress to represent them, while Montana, with approximately 1.09 million residents, has two. That means Delaware’s lone representative serves nearly twice as many constituents as each of Montana’s representatives.

Redlawsk and Price calculate that, as a result, Delaware residents receive 23.2% less representation per person than the national average.

The lawsuit names Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the official performing the duties of Census Bureau director and the clerk of the U.S. House as defendants.

The history of the 435-seat limit

The U.S. Constitution requires that seats in the House be distributed among states according to population, with every state guaranteed at least one representative. For much of the country’s history, the House expanded as the population grew but, in 1911, Congress approved legislation capping the number of members at 435 members.

Congress subsequently adopted legislation in 1929 creating an automatic process for reallocating seats after each decennial census, without requiring lawmakers to approve a new apportionment plan.

The result was a House that remained at 435 voting members even as the country’s population more than tripled. The average number of residents represented by each House member grew from approximately 210,000 to more than 760,000 following the 2020 census.

However, the distribution has varied and the lawsuit argues that the fixed number of seats has created increasingly unequal representation between states. Although Idaho, West Virginia and South Dakota also have substantially less representation than the national average, Delaware is the most impacted.

Beyond the Montana comparison, Rhode Island has only about 107,000 more residents than Delaware but twice as many House members. Delaware has approximately 413,000 more residents than one-representative Wyoming, meaning Wyoming residents have about 1.7 times as much representation per person.