The U.S. state of Wyoming has two chambers in its state legislature. Its upper chamber, the Wyoming Senate, has currently 31 single-member districts. [1]
The Wyoming Constitution originally mandated a county-based apportionment scheme. [2] Previously, the state legislature had a mixed system, with both multi-member districts and single-member districts. The state Senate specifically had 9 multi-member districts and 8 single-member districts in the 1990 apportionment plan. In a 1991 federal legal case, Gorin v. Karpan, the court ruled the 1990 apportionment plan was unconstitutional. The ruling determined the district map "created unconstitutionally excessive percentage deviations from the equal population principle" established by the United States Supreme Court's interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the landmark 1964 case Reynolds v. Sims . [3]
On February 21, 1992, in response to the ruling in Gorin, the state legislature enacted a new apportionment plan, with a new district scheme. The plan replaced the mixed system with a purely single-member district based system. The state Senate had 30 districts, with two state House districts nested in each one of the state Senate districts. The new districts were drawn without respect to county borders. [3]
In the 2022 apportionment plan for the state legislature, there was an additional state Senate district added to the map. [4]
The following is a list of districts in the Wyoming Senate. [1] [5] [6]