Arizona: US justices could toss legislative maps in Arizona | Arizona Daily Star

The fact that politics may have been involved in drawing new legislative district lines is no reason to declare them illegal, the attorney for the Independent Redistricting Commission told the U.S. Supreme Court. In legal arguments to the court, Mary O’Grady does not dispute that two federal judges found that some of the commissioners altered the boundaries of at least one district to make it more politically competitive, a move that would give Democratic candidates a better chance of getting elected. And O’Grady conceded the final map for the 30 districts had a population differential of 8.8 percent between the largest and smallest, despite requirements for equal population. But she said the full commission approved the plan not out of partisan motives but because the panel believed it would provide the best chance of complying with the federal Voting Rights Act. That law generally prohibits political changes that dilute minority voting strength. And that, she told the justices, justifies the changes, as well as the population differential. The effort by challengers to void the map is more than a debate about legal niceties.

Ohio: Redistricting proposal would give majority party more power, critics say | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Critics say new proposals intended to make Ohio’s process for drawing congressional and legislative district lines less partisan would actually make gerrymandering worse. Rep. Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, introduced a pair of resolutions last week intended to amplify minority party members’ voices on the panels that draw the lines. Dan Tokaji, a law professor at OSU’s Moritz College of Law, said the proposals also remove safeguards that allow Ohio citizens and public officials to challenge newly drawn district maps. Tokaji said the resolutions don’t allow a citizen-initiated referendum or a governor’s veto of the congressional map approved by state lawmakers. “This will ensure the majority party can ram through the plan they want without any votes from the minority party and any realistic plan of it being reversed,” Tokaji told reporters Monday.

Editorials: The Supreme Court Hears an Alabama Case on the Voting Rights Act | New York TImes

As long as politicians are entrusted with drawing legislative maps, they will use their pen to gain partisan advantage. Courts generally do not interfere with that process, but there are limits to this where race is involved. The problem is figuring out which motive — race or partisanship — underlies the redistricting. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court considered this issue in a thorny case that could have significant implications for the future of the Voting Rights Act. The main legal question before the justices was whether Alabama lawmakers had paid too much attention to race when they redrew the state’s district lines. The 1965 voting law requires states to create districts where minorities can elect candidates of their choice, specifically in places where whites and blacks tend to pick different candidates. That’s clearly the case in Alabama, where, in 2008, Barack Obama received 98 percent of the black vote and 10 percent of the white vote. The Constitution also requires that state legislative districts contain roughly equal populations.

Florida: State Supreme Court: Release redistricting documents | News Service of Florida

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously rejected a Republican political consultant’s efforts to keep his redistricting records private, promising to give the public its first glimpse of documents that helped lead to the state’s congressional districts being thrown out this summer. While different justices signed onto two separate opinions about the case, both found that Pat Bainter and his consulting firm, Data Targeting Inc., waited too long to claim that releasing some of the documents would violate his First Amendment rights. The documents were requested by voting-rights organizations challenging the state’s congressional districts. Writing for five members of the court, Justice Barbara Pariente used unusually harsh language to paint Bainter’s efforts as part of a monthslong stalling tactic as the battle over the congressional map played out in a Leon County court.

Alabama: Justices Hear Black Lawmakers’ Challenge to Alabama Redistricting | New York Times

The Supreme Court on Wednesday wrestled with the role race may play in drawing legislative maps. The issue was an old one, but the case had a novel twist: Wednesday’s challenge came from black and Democratic lawmakers in Alabama who said the state Legislature had relied too heavily on race in its 2012 state redistricting by maintaining high concentrations of black voters in some districts. Justice Antonin Scalia said things have changed in how voting rights cases are litigated. “You realize, I assume, that you’re making the argument that the opponents of black plaintiffs used to make here,” he told Richard Pildes, a lawyer for one set of challengers. The problem with the Alabama districts, Mr. Pildes said, was that the Republican-controlled Legislature had used “rigid racial quotas” in drawing district lines. “Racial quotas in the context of districting are a dangerous business,” he said. “They can be a way of giving minorities faced with racially polarized voting a fair opportunity to elect, but they can also be a way of unnecessarily packing voters by race in ways that further polarize and isolate us by race.”

National: Supreme Court Considers Voting-Rights Case | Wall Street Journal

The Supreme Court appeared divided Wednesday over whether Alabama can draw its election map with predominantly black legislative districts that effectively limit racially diverse areas where Democrats can compete. The case could have implications for redistricting across the country, but particularly in the South, where racially polarized voting has produced legislative majorities of white Republicans and significant numbers of black Democrats, but left little room for white Democrats, whose numbers have dwindled in recent decades. It is the court’s first major review of Voting Rights Act requirements since last year’s 5-4 decision scaled back federal enforcement of the 1965 law. Following the 2010 census, the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature resolved to maintain black supermajorities in a handful of districts, over objections from Democrats who believed having racially diverse districts could help white Democrats hold seats.

National: U.S. justices weigh racially charged Alabama redistricting plan | Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared unsure how to resolve a challenge to a state legislature redistricting plan in Alabama that packed black voters into certain districts in a way that critics say diminishes their influence at the polls. The nine justices heard an 70-minute oral argument on two cases brought by the Alabama Democratic Conference and the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus against the redistricting by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 2012. The case centers on the practice known as gerrymandering in which election districts are drawn in a way to provide one party an advantage in as many districts as possible while consolidating the other party’s voters into as few as possible. Democrats say Alabama, a state with a past history of erecting hurdles for black voters, violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law by concentrating black voters, who tend to vote Democratic, into a small number of districts.

Editorials: Argument analysis: Hitting the “sweet spot” on race, party, and redistricting? | Richard Hasen/SCOTUSblog

By the end of Wednesday’s oral argument in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama and Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama, it was not clear whether the state of Alabama or challengers to its state redistricting plan would be likely to win the racial gerrymandering claim currently before the Supreme Court. Nor was it clear how the Court would separate permissible partisan gerrymanders from impermissible racial gerrymanders. But the argument left little doubt that, one way or another and sooner or later, Alabama is likely to have a legislative districting plan which helps the state’s Republican legislators and minimizes the voting power of the state’s Democrats and African Americans. The legal landscape and factual background of this case are exceedingly complex and laid out more fully in this argument preview. The case concerns a challenge to state legislative districts drawn by the Alabama Legislature after the 2010 census. The legislature, newly controlled by Republicans, drew a redistricting plan that contained the same number of majority-minority Senate districts and one additional majority-minority House district compared to the 1990s plan drawn by a court and the 2000s plan drawn by a Democratic legislature. Because of population shifts and declines, as well as the composition of the original 2001 districts, the African-American districts were the most underpopulated of all the districts, meaning that many voters had to be shifted into these districts to comply with “one person, one vote” requirements.

Alabama: Minority redistricting case seems to divide Supreme Court | The Washington Post

The Supreme Court seemed divided Wednesday over and perhaps even stumped by a request that Alabama redo its state legislative redistricting plan that challengers said was drawn with too much emphasis on the race of voters. The challenge was brought by black officeholders and Democrats who argued that the state’s Republican leadership packed minority voters into districts that allowed the election of African American officials but reduced their influence elsewhere. The court’s jurisprudence on when race can be used in drawing legislative districts, however, is complex and at times contradictory. And more than one justice pointed out during oral arguments that minority voters used to come to the court to demand that legislatures specifically use race in order to ensure that blacks and Hispanics be represented in government.

Editorials: GOP reaps North Carolina victories from its redistricting maps | News Observer

North Carolina Republicans cheered the come-from-behind victory of their U.S. Senate candidate Thom Tillis, but they’ve been relatively silent about their overwhelming success in the state’s congressional districts. Perhaps they’re sheepish about how they arranged the big win. They should be. Republicans won the General Assembly in 2010 and with it the right to redraw the state’s election districts. They, like the Democrats before them, drew the lines to make a majority of districts tilt in their favor. But they overdid it. The results from the 2014 general election look more like an indictment of Republican manipulation of the election process than an endorsement of Republican policies. More than 2.7 million votes were cast in the Senate race, with Tillis beating U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan by fewer than 47,000 votes, or less than 2 percent of the vote. That statewide result would suggest an almost even split between Republicans and Democrats, but the political competition evaporates in the congressional districts.

Editorials: Did legislators redraw district lines to hurt Democrats or to disenfranchise black voters? | Richard Hasen/Slate

As Democrats struggled last week to salvage control of the Senate, they pushed to get as many black voters to the polls as possible, especially in the South. It’s no wonder: Blacks are the most reliable Democratic voters, and 89 percent of them ended up supporting Democratic candidates in the 2014 elections (a mark that was actually down from 2012). White voters, in contrast, came out heavily for Republicans in the South. In North Carolina, where incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan lost to Republican Thom Tillis, the GOP candidate got just 3 percent of the black vote. But as we all know, the black turnout was not high enough to beat back the Republican wave in North Carolina or elsewhere. In North Carolina in particular, black turnout was down compared with 2012. Recognizing this major overlap of race and party in the South is key to understanding Wednesday’s Supreme Court case involving a constitutional challenge to Alabama’s legislative redistricting. No one disputes that the Alabama Legislature packed black voters into a few legislative districts, thus strengthening Republican control in the majority of districts throughout the rest of the state. But whether or not that action is constitutional depends a great deal on whether the court views this as a case about race (in which case Alabama may have acted unconstitutionally) or one about party (in which case Alabama’s actions are constitutional, if unsavory politics as usual). Given current realities, this “race or party” determination is a wholly artificial exercise, but one that puts the justices in a very interesting spot.

Alabama: Justices to hear Alabama redistricting case | Montgomery Advertiser

Alabama’s complicated history of race and politics will be Exhibit A when the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments Wednesday in a case that could change how state lawmakers decide legislative boundaries. The justices will hear 70 minutes of argument about whether the Republicans in charge of Alabama’s legislature relied too heavily on race when they redrew state legislative maps after the 2010 census. Black Democrats allege that the GOP, which gained control of the legislature in the 2010 elections for the first time in more than a century, intentionally packed more black voters into already majority-black districts in order to make the other districts more friendly for Republicans.

Alabama: Race again at heart of voting- rights debate — but with twist | The Washington Post

Alongside the andouille gumbo, the crab-and-shrimp bisque and a succulent smoked pork shoulder, there was an endangered species featured at this town’s recent Taste of the South picnic. Her name is Susan Smith, and she is a white Democrat seeking election to the Alabama Senate. Such creatures used to rule the state, but only four remain among Alabama’s 35 senators. Two of them decided not to compete in Tuesday’s election after the Republican super-majority in the legislature redrew boundaries to make their districts more hospitable to GOP candidates. It’s a familiar story in the increasingly Republican South. But the Supreme Court has decided to step into this one and will hear arguments in the matter next week. The justices are being asked to find that, as has happened many times in Alabama’s history, race played an improper role in how the state was reapportioned. But the essence of the allegation is not that Republicans made it too hard for African American candidates to be elected. It’s that they made it too easy.

Texas: Messing With Texas Again: Putting It Back Under Federal Supervision | Richard Hasen/TPM

Readers of the entire 147-page opinion issued earlier this month by a federal district court striking down Texas’s strict voter identification law as unconstitutional and a violation of the Voting Rights Act might have been too exhausted to realize that the opinion’s very last sentence may be its most important. The court ended its opinion with a dry statement promising a future hearing on “plaintiffs’ request for relief under Section 3(c) of the Voting Rights Act.” That hearing, however, has the potential to require Texas to get federal approval for any future voting changes for up to the next decade, and to make it much more difficult for the state to pass more restrictive voting rules. It may be much more important than the ruling on the voter ID law itself. From 1975 through 2013, Texas was one of a number of (mostly Southern) states and jurisdictions which were subject to “preclearance” under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This meant that before Texas could make any changes in its voting rules (such as enacting a voter identification law or passing a new redistricting plan) it had to demonstrate either to the United States Department of Justice or to a three-judge federal court in Washington D.C. that its change was not intended, and would not have the effect, of making minority voters worse off. Texas enacted its voter identification law in 2011, but the Department of Justice believed it was discriminatory, and a three-judge court rejected Texas’s request to implement the law.

Kentucky: Redistricting haunts election with ‘ghost precincts’ | Cincinnati Inquirer

Kentucky’s legislative redistricting haunted the county clerks of Campbell and Kenton counties by forcing them to set up “ghost precincts.” “Ghost precincts” were created in strips of land where nobody lives in response to make House and Senate districts contiguous, said Campbell County Clerk Jack Snodgrass. The legislature approved the redistricting plan in August 2013. A wooded hillside along Sleepy Hollow Road is home to Kenton County’s ghost Fort Wright 4.5 precinct. Nobody is registered to vote in the Sleepy Hollow precinct including Ichabod Crane. And Crescent Springs 3.5, another ghost precinct, is along the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks. The new precincts were created in response to the redrawing of the 23rd Senate District and the 65th and 69th House districts.

Florida: Congressional redistricting heads to state’s high court just as lawmakers return to Capitol | Palm Beach Post

The Florida Supreme Court set the day after the opening of the 2015 Legislature for a pivotal hearing into whether the state’s redrawn congressional districts are valid. The court set March 4 for a hearing in the appeal by a coalition of voters’ groups calling for overturning a judge’s ruling that upheld the congressional plan recast by the Republican-led Legislature. The move is the latest in a high-stakes political drama steeped in partisan politics. Following a 12-day trial that ended in June, Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis threw out district boundaries approved in 2012 by the Legislature, specifically finding that the districts held by U.S. Reps. Daniel Webster, R-Orlando and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville were drawn to help Republicans maintain overwhelming control of the state’s 27-member congressional delegation.

Ohio: Redistricting Change Failed | State of Elections

In the 2012 elections, a Redistricting Amendment to the Ohio Constitution was put on the ballot. Known as Issue 2, the amendment would have created a commission of twelve citizens to draw legislative and congressional maps. The amendment was defeated at the ballot box by a resounding 63% against and 37% for the amendment. To many, partisan redistricting is only a polite way of saying gerrymandering, and this very process of the state legislature choosing who will essentially elect them is provided for in the Ohio Constitution. In fact, the Secretary of State of Ohio, John Husted, wrote in the Washington Post this February, “[I]f government is to be more responsive, it is not the people but the Ohio Constitution that needs to change.” However, it may very well be the case that John Husted was the reason for Issue 2 failing at the ballot box. In 2012 I was an undergraduate student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I received my absentee ballot in the mail and started working my way through it. After wondering to myself “Why in the world am I electing members of the Judiciary?” I reached the part of the ballot pertaining to Issues. The first, Ohio’s twenty year option to hold a constitutional convention to “revise, alter, or amend the constitution,” and after that a two column monstrosity of an issue that made me cringe. I must confess, I voted against it. I thought it looked too complicated and surely there could be an easier way to redistrict.

National: Results from independent redistricting are mixed | Associated Press

A few states have turned to independent or arms-length commissions to limit political influences when redrawing congressional and legislative districts. The Supreme Court, however, is hearing a case from Arizona that could jeopardize the future of these commissions. Commission supporters point to more competitive contests and new faces replacing incumbents as evidence of reduced gerrymandering, the deliberate drawing of often misshaped districts to benefit one party or the other. In California, a 14-member citizen panel of Republicans, Democrats and people who are not affiliated with either party redrew the state’s 53 congressional and 120 legislative maps in 2012. The realignment of political boundaries produced some of the most competitive congressional races in decades. Fourteen House incumbents either lost their seats or opted not to run under the new lines. Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, New Jersey and Washington also have set up commissions to redraw district boundaries after the new census every 10 years. A handful of others have formed panels to redraw only state legislature seats.

Voting Blogs: What a Pain for Payne: Virginia’s Racial Packing Lawsuit | State of Elections

As a slew of lawyers scurried around trying to organize their maps and evidence, Judge Payne sat calmly in the center of a three-judge panel. In late May of 2014, high-powered lawyers boiled down mountains of statistics, diagrams, and expert opinions into a two-day bench trial. They needed to convince Judge Payne and two Fourth Circuit judges to rule that the General Assembly primarily used race to concoct Virginia’s fantastically shaped 3rd congressional district. Against all odds, they succeeded. Although all the attention and spotlight has been on Alabama, Virginia has been facing its own mudslinging, partisan wrangling, racial packing lawsuit. Three plaintiffs – Dawn Curry Page, Gloria Personhuballah and James Farkas – have challenged the constitutionality of Virginia’s 3rd congressional district as a racial gerrymander in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. They allege that the General Assembly “packed” black voters into the 3rd district, Virginia’s only minority-majority district, to dilute minority influence in the surrounding predominantly white districts. In the enacted plan, the black voting-age population increased from 53.1 percent to 56.3 percent while it decreased in every adjacent district. Furthermore, African-Americans “accounted for over 90% of the added voting age residents.”

New York: Ballot Item Would Reform Redistricting, at Least in Theory | New York Times

It has divided good-government groups, alienated some liberals and reformers from the governor, been ruthlessly edited for veracity by a State Supreme Court justice and, with Election Day just a little more than three weeks away, virtually ignored by the voters. Still, Proposal 1 will be on the statewide ballot Nov. 4 and, given the way things work in Albany, is likely to benefit whichever party wins control of the State Senate after the next decennial census in 2020. Democrats comfortably control the Assembly; the Senate has teetered between the two parties. In theory, at least, the compromise proposal would amend the State Constitution to change the way state legislative and congressional districts are drawn after every census, a process that traditionally has been meticulously, if sometimes awkwardly, designed to favor incumbents.

Florida: State off the hook for legal fees in redistricting fight | Tampa Tribune

A Leon County circuit judge said Thursday the state is not required to pay the attorneys’ fees of voting-rights groups and individual voters who successfully challenged a 2012 congressional redistricting plan. Though Circuit Judge Terry Lewis’ decision is likely to be appealed, it would save the state from paying a tab that runs at least into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lawyers on both sides said they did not have an exact amount of the disputed fees. Attorneys for the plaintiffs, including groups such as the League of Women Voters of Florida, offered a somewhat-novel legal argument in seeking the fees. That argument, which has been used in other states but not Florida, is known as the “private attorney general doctrine” — essentially that private parties had to pursue a case of societal importance.

Florida: To Fight Corruption, Voting Rights Groups Want To Make Everyone An Attorney General | WUSF

A Leon County circuit judge ruled Thursday the plaintiffs in Florida’s redistricting lawsuit can recover some of their legal costs, but not attorney’s fees.  The voting-rights activists are looking to a legal concept known as the “private attorney general” to make their request. When state governments are involved in inappropriate or even corrupt activity, it can be difficult to hold them accountable.  The attorney general might seem like the right office to investigate and prosecute those cases, but there’s a built-in conflict of interest because attorneys general are also the top legal advisor for the state government.  Former Stetson Law School Dean Bruce Jacob says some places avoid that problem by installing a parallel office. “They have what is called the ombudsman,” Jacob says, “who is a person, a lawyer – or I guess it could be a non-lawyer – but a person who looks out for the interests of the public.”

Virginia: Congressional redistricting could give governor leverage | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Republican legislators who lead the General Assembly face an unusual prospect as they redraw the state’s congressional map to comply with a court order. For the first time in nearly a quarter century, a Democratic governor must sign off on legislators’ plan to redraw congressional district boundaries. That means Gov. Terry McAuliffe could hold out for a more competitive map than the current configuration in which Republicans hold eight of the state’s 11 U.S. House seats. “The Republicans, I think, are really in a bit of a bind,” said Bob Holsworth, a veteran political analyst who headed then-Gov. Bob McDonnell’s bipartisan redistricting panel in 2011. McDonnell did not push for the panel’s recommendations, which the legislature ignored. In 2012 McDonnell signed off on a plan written by General Assembly Republicans.

Virginia: Redistricting Ruling: Court Tosses Congressional Map | Roll Call

A federal court has ruled Virginia’s congressional map violated the 14th Amendment and instructed the legislature to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries by April 1, 2015. On Tuesday, three federal judges sided with the plaintiffs, who argued the Republican-led legislature drew Virginia’s 3rd District to pack blacks into the district, thus diminishing their influence in neighboring districts and violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The current map will still be in effect for the 2014 elections. The court instructed the legislature to redraw the entire congressional map by April, and there will likely be more legal action before then. “This is going to get appealed to the Supreme Court,” a redistricting expert involved with the case told CQ Roll Call in a phone interview. The expert pointed out the issues in the Virginia case are similar to a redistricting case in Alabama, which the Supreme Court agreed to consider.

Editorials: In America, voters don’t pick their politicians. Politicians pick their voters | Wayne Dawkins | The Guardian

One out of every five Virginians in the birthplace of English America are black – disproportionally more than the one out eight people nationwide who are African American. It is therefore ludicrous that, since 2010, even more black people per capita were packed into US Representative Robert C “Bobby” Scott’s already predominantly black district. That district, three federal judges declared on Tuesday, was gerrymandered, and they ordered the Virginia General Assembly to redraw the boundaries in 2015. But elected officials have forfeited their chances to do that job competently. It does not matter whether Republicans or Democrats hold the power; both sides have been guilty over decades of abusing voters by gerrymandering districts. In the 21st century, voters don’t pick their elected officials; politicians pick their voters. This time, a nonpartisan commission should draw the congressional boundaries.

Virginia: Congressional Map Struck Down by Federal-Court Panel | Wall Street Journal

A federal-court panel on Tuesday struck down Virginia’s congressional map, ruling the state’s last redistricting effort relied too heavily on race in drawing boundaries. The 2-1 ruling, from a Virginia federal court, sided with challengers who said the Virginia election map packed black voters too heavily into one district, reducing their influence in other state districts. The federal judges, sitting as a special election review panel, didn’t require the state to change its map for the midterm elections, which are just weeks away. Instead, the judges said Virginia lawmakers should act “within the next legislative session” to draw new electoral districts. At issue was Virginia’s Third Congressional District, which includes parts of Richmond. The black voting-age population after the redistricting makes up about 56% of the district, according to the court’s opinion. The court described the district as an oddly shaped composition of a “disparate chain” of predominantly black communities.

South Carolina: State can keep redrawn districts, Supreme Court says | Associated Press

The Supreme Court said Monday that South Carolina can keep its redrawn state house and congressional maps despite a challenge from black voters in the state. The justices offered no comment when they rejected the appeal from voters, who wanted the court to re-examine the newly drawn borders of state house and congressional districts. In 2012, six black voters from counties in the southern and eastern parts of the state sued Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and the Republican-controlled state legislature. They sought to throw out the redrawn district maps and prevent the state from holding any elections based on those maps. They argued the maps pushed black voters into one congressional district and created “voting apartheid.”

Arizona: The Supreme Court to look behind the “safe seats” issue | Constitution Daily

Few tasks that confront a state legislature are more jealously guarded than the power to draw new lines for election districts for their members and for their state’s members in the U.S. House of Representatives. But few actions of state legislatures may do as much to limit voters’ real choices than the use of those redistricting powers. With a month to go before this year’s congressional election, according to the respected Rothenberg Political Report, a total of 385 of the 435 seats in the House are considered safe for the party that now holds them: 212 Republicans, 173 Democrats. Thus, the Report’s most recent calculation is that only 50 seats are actually “in play.”

National: Justices Take Cases on Redistricting and Judicial Elections | New York Times

The Supreme Court on Thursday added 11 cases to its docket, including ones on redistricting, judicial elections and discrimination in housing and employment. … The redistricting case will consider the fate of an independent commission created by Arizona voters in 2000 in an effort to make the process of drawing congressional district lines less partisan. The court’s decision is likely to affect a similar body in California. The Arizona commission has five members, with two each chosen by Republican and Democratic lawmakers. The final member is chosen by the other four. Republican lawmakers have complained that the commission’s latest efforts favored Democrats. The Republican-led State Legislature sued, saying that the voters did not have the power to strip elected lawmakers of their power to draw district lines. They pointed to a provision of the federal Constitution that says, “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the Legislature thereof.”

Arizona: U.S. Supreme Court could toss out voting boundaries | Arizona Republic

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the Arizona Legislature’s argument that only state lawmakers have the authority to draw congressional boundaries. The court also wants to hear arguments on why the Legislature believes it has the legal standing to get involved in the case. Arguments could happen early in the new year. At issue is the ongoing dispute over the nine congressional districts the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission drew in 2011. Arizona lawmakers argue that the U.S. Constitution gives only the legislature the power to draw those boundaries.