The U.S. Supreme Court will decide who exactly is the “Legislature’ in Arizona, at least for purposes of drawing political lines. In a brief order Tuesday, the justices set March 2 to hear arguments by attorneys for the organized Legislature that only they — meaning the 90 members — can divide up the state into its nine congressional districts. They contend that’s what the U.S. Constitution requires. If the high court agrees, that would pave the way for the Republican-controlled Legislature to redraw the lines ahead of the 2016 election. And that would allow them to reconfigure the maps to give GOP candidates a better chance of winning — and of improving the 5-4 split in the congressional delegation this year’s election gave to Republicans. But first they have to convince the justices that the majority of a three-judge panel got it wrong when they concluded otherwise. The fight is over a provision in the federal Constitution which says the “times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the Legislature thereof.’
But in 2000 voters amended the Arizona Constitution to create the Independent Redistricting Commission, giving its five members the power to draw both congressional and legislative boundaries. It drew both sets of maps following the 2000 census and again after the 2010 count.
It was only after that second redistricting — and creation of congressional maps that Republicans did not like — that lawmakers sued. They argued voters had no right to wrest that power from the Legislature.
Lawmakers lost the first round earlier this year.
U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow, writing for the majority of the three-judge panel, said he reads nothing in the U.S. Constitution that precludes the voters, as the ultimate lawmakers, from deciding to give that legislative chore to the commission. And Snow said the term “legislature’ refers not to the 90 elected lawmakers but to the state’s entire lawmaking process.
Full Article: Supreme Court to settle Arizona redistricting fight – The Verde Independent – Cottonwood, Arizona.