The U.S. Supreme Court heard two redistricting cases on Tuesday, December 8. The Texas case, Evenwel v Abbott, got the most press attention. But the Court also heard an Arizona case, Harris v Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, 14-232. Here is the transcript.
The Arizona case was won by the Independent Redistricting Commission last year in a 3-judge U.S. District Court. The case involves legislative redistricting. Some voters charged that the Commission impermissibly and deliberately put too many voters in the Republican-leaning districts, and too few voters in the Demoratic-leading districts.
An oddity in the case is that the Secretary of State Michelle Reagan, a Republican, is a Defendant, and yet she is on the side of the voters who filed the case. The former Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, is also a Republican, but he did not support the voters who filed the case. That resulted in the state’s former Attorney General defending the Independent Redistricting Commission when the case was in the lower court; yet in the U.S. Supreme Court the current Attorney General argued against the Commission.
I don’t think the Arizona Attorney General has ever represented the independent redistricting commission. It may have something to do with separation of powers. I seem to recall that in a prior decade, the commission had to get donations for legal representation.