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Page Number: 57

18 

ARIZONA STATE LEGISLATURE v. ARIZONA 

INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMM’N
 
ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting
 

adopting  new  congressional  districts,  and  the  Governor
exercised his veto power under the State Constitution.  As 
noted above, the Minnesota secretary of state defended the 
veto on the ground that “the Legislature” in the Elections 
Clause  referred  not  just  to  “the  two  houses of  the  legisla-
ture”  but  to  “the  entire  legislative  power  of  the  state  . . . 
however  exercised.”    This  Court  rejected  that  argument, 
reiterating  that  the  term  “Legislature”  meant  “the  repre-
sentative  body  which  made  the  laws  of  the  people.”    285 
U. S.,  at  365  (quoting  Hawke,  253  U. S.,  at  227).    The 
Court  nevertheless  went  on  to  hold  that  the  Elections 
Clause  did  not  prevent  a  State  from  applying  the  usual
rules  of  its  legislative  process—including  a  gubernatorial 
veto—to election regulations prescribed by the legislature.
285  U. S.,  at  373.    As  in  Hildebrant,  the  legislature  was 
not displaced, nor was it redefined; it just had to start on a 
new redistricting plan.

The  majority  initially  describes  Hildebrant  and  Smiley
as holding that “redistricting is a legislative function, to be
performed in accordance with the State’s prescriptions for 
lawmaking,  which  may  include  the  referendum  and  the
Governor’s veto.”  Ante, at 19.  That description is true, so 
far as it goes.  But it hardly supports the result the major-
ity  reaches  here.  There  is  a  critical  difference  between 
allowing a State to supplement the legislature’s role in the
legislative  process  and  permitting  the  State  to  supplant 
the legislature altogether.  See Salazar, 541 U. S., at 1095 
(Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (“to 
be  consistent  with  Article  I,  §4,  there  must  be  some  limit
on the State’s ability to define lawmaking by excluding the 
legislature itself”).  Nothing in Hildebrant, Smiley, or any 
other  precedent  supports  the  majority’s  conclusion  that 
imposing  some  constraints  on  the  legislature  justifies
deposing it entirely.