reapportionment

noun

re·​ap·​por·​tion·​ment ˌrē-ə-ˈpȯr-shən-mənt 

plural reapportionments

: an act or result of reapportioning something : the process or result of making a new proportionate division or distribution of something

especially, US law : the reassignment of representatives proportionally among the states in accordance with changes in population distribution

As one might expect, the legislative majority did not care to realign districts to represent the current distribution of the population, because reapportionment would endanger some of their seats.

—Robert H. Bork

During the Warren Court period the federal courts revolutionized criminal procedure law, created modern antidiscrimination law, recaptured the First Amendment from the shambles of McCarthyism, and restructured American politics through reapportionment.

—Elizabeth Mensch

Bipartisan gerrymandering following the 2000 reapportionment produced hundreds of safe Democratic seats, hundreds of safe Republican seats, and not much else.

—Peter Beinart

Examples of reapportionment in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Thanks to a reapportionment ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 1967 Legislature was the first to represent more actual people than pine trees. —Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 27 June 2024

In a 2020 article, the Pew Research Center examined how removing unauthorized immigrants from the 2020 census apportionment count could affect the reapportionment of House seats. —Andre Byik, USA TODAY, 10 June 2024

In West Virginia, two House Republican incumbents are competing because the state lost a seat in reapportionment. —John McCormick, WSJ, 30 Apr. 2022

In some cases that could theoretically increase the number of congresspeople those states can send to the House of Representatives in Washington, although such reapportionment only occurs once a decade. —David Hamilton, Quartz, 19 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1788, in the meaning defined above