What Reynolds did was not simply dictate equally populated State Assembly voting districts. IMO that was bad enough court overreach into state matters. I cringe a bit when fairness is even brought up as a reason for court intervention. It strikes me as related to despicable social justice.
The states previously had varied methods of electing/appointing members to their senates, some of which went back to the earliest days of our republic and were independent of population.
For instance, Maryland came up with a filtered election of its state senators that was the model our framers used for both the US Senate and the electoral college.
Reynolds threw that all out, and like the 17th Amendment, resulted in popularly derived state legislatures, a bad idea that has lead to loss of freedom.
Wow, that’s an entire history I know nothing about. Do you have a resource that I could check? I’d like to learn more.