Arizona’s Redistricting Plan By IRC Upheld By Supreme Court

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich presented oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court in the Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) in December 2015, and today the Court ruled against the state.

The case was on appeal at the Supreme Court after a District Court upheld the maps drawn by the IRC.

The unanimous opinion was written by Justice Breyer.

The Court found:

After the 2010 census, Arizona’s independent redistricting commission (Commission), comprising two Republicans, two Democrats, and one Independent, redrew Arizona’s legislative districts, with guidance from legal counsel, mapping specialists, a statistician, and a Voting Rights Act specialist. The initial plan had a maximum population deviation from absolute equality of districts of 4.07%, but the Commission adopted a revised plan with an 8.8% deviation on a 3-to-2 vote, with the Republican members dissenting. After the Department of Justice approved the revised plan as consistent with the Voting Rights Act, appellants filed suit, claiming that the plan’s population variations were inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.

A three-judge Federal District Court entered judgment for the Commission, concluding that the “deviations were primarily a result of good-faith efforts to comply with the Voting Rights Act . . . even though partisanship played some role.”

Held: The District Court did not err in upholding Arizona’s redistricting plan. Pp. 3–11.

(a) The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause requires States to “make an honest and good faith effort to construct [legislative] districts . . . as nearly of equal population as is practicable,” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 577, but mathematical perfection is not required. Deviations may be justified by “legitimate considerations,” id., at 579, including “traditional districting principles such as compactness [and] contiguity,” Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 647, as well as a state interest in maintaining the integrity of political subdivisions, Mahan v. Howell, 410 U. S. 315, 328, a competitive balance among political parties, Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U. S. 735, 752, and, before Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. ___, compliance with §5 of the Voting Rights Act. It was proper for the Commission to proceed on the last basis here. In addition, “minor deviations from mathematical equality”—i.e., deviations “under 10%,” Brown v. Thomson, 462 U. S. 835, 842—do not, by themselves, “make out a prima facie case of invidious discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment [requiring] justification by the State,” Gaffney, supra, at 745. Because the deviation here is under 10%, appellants cannot rely upon the numbers to show a constitutional violation.

Instead, they must show that it is more probable than not that the deviation reflects the predominance of illegitimate reapportionment factors rather than “legitimate considerations.” Pp. 3–5.

(b) Appellants have failed to meet that burden here, where the record supports the District Court’s conclusion that the deviations predominantly reflected Commission efforts to achieve compliance with the Voting Rights Act, not to secure political advantage for the Democratic Party. To meet the Voting Rights Act’s nonretrogression requirement, a new plan, when compared to the current plan (benchmark plan), must not diminish the number of districts in which minority groups can “elect their preferred candidates of choice” (ability-to-elect districts). A State can obtain legal assurance that it has satisfied this requirement if it submits its proposed plan to the Justice Department and the Department does not object to the plan. The record shows that the Commission redrew the initial map to ensure that the plan had 10 ability-to-elect districts, the same number as the benchmark plan. But after a statistician reported that the Justice Department still might not agree with the plan, the Commission changed additional boundaries, causing District 8, a Republican leaning district, to become more politically competitive. Because this record well supports the District Court’s finding that the Commission was trying to comply with the Voting Rights Act, appellants have not shown that it is more probable than not that illegitimate considerations were the predominant motivation for the deviations. They have thus failed to show that the plan violates the Equal Protection Clause. Pp. 5–9.

(c) Appellants’ additional arguments are unpersuasive. While Arizona’s Democratic-leaning districts may be somewhat underpopulated and its Republican-leaning districts somewhat overpopulated, these variations may reflect only the tendency of Arizona’s 2010 minority populations to vote disproportionately for Democrats and thus can be explained by the Commission’s efforts to maintain at least 10 ability-to-elect districts. Cox v. Larios, 542 U. S. 947, in which the Court affirmed a District Court’s conclusion that a Georgia reapportionment plan violated the Equal Protection Clause where its deviation, though less than 10%, resulted from the use of illegitimate factors, is inapposite because appellants have not carried their burden of showing the use of illegitimate factors here. And because Shelby County was decided after Arizona’s plan was created, it has no bearing on the issue whether the State’s attempt to comply with the Voting Rights Act is a legitimate state interest. Pp. 9–11.

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