Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1314_3ea4.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

32 

ARIZONA STATE LEGISLATURE v. ARIZONA 
INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMM’N
 
Opinion of the Court 

THE CHIEF JUSTICE, in dissent, suggests that independ­
ent  commissions  established  by  initiative  are  a  high-
minded  experiment  that  has  failed.  Post,  at  26–27.  For 
this  assessment,  THE  CHIEF  JUSTICE  cites  a  three-judge
Federal  District  Court  opinion,  Harris  v.  Arizona  Inde-
pendent Redistricting Comm’n, 993 F. Supp. 2d 1042 (Ariz. 
2014).  That opinion, he asserts, “detail[s] the partisanship 
that has affected the Commission.”  Post, at 26.  No careful 
reader could so conclude. 

The  report  of  the  decision  in  Harris  comprises  a  per 
curiam opinion, an opinion concurring in the judgment by
Judge  Silver,  and  a  dissenting  opinion  by  Judge  Wake.
The  per  curiam  opinion  found  “in  favor  of  the  Commis­
sion.”  993 F. Supp. 2d, at 1080.  Deviations from the one-
person,  one-vote  principle,  the  per  curiam  opinion  ex­
plained at length, were “small” and, in the main, could not 
be  attributed  to  partisanship.    Ibid.  While  partisanship
“may  have  played  some  role,”  the  per  curiam  opinion
stated,  deviations  were  “predominantly  a  result  of  the
Commission’s  good-faith  efforts  to  achieve  preclearance 
under the Voting Rights Act.”  Id., at 1060.  Judge Silver,
although she joined the per curiam opinion, made clear at 
the very outset of that opinion her finding that “partisan­
ship did not play a role.”  Id., at 1046, n. 1.  In her concur­
ring  opinion,  she  repeated  her  finding  that  the  evidence 
did  not  show  partisanship  at  work,  id.,  at  1087;  instead, 
she  found,  the  evidence  “[was]  overwhelming  [that]  the 
final map was a product of the commissioners’s considera­
tion of appropriate redistricting criteria.”  Id., at 1088.  To 
describe  Harris  as  a  decision  criticizing  the  Commission 
for pervasive partisanship, post, at 26, THE CHIEF JUSTICE 
could  rely  only  upon  the  dissenting  opinion,  which  ex­
pressed views the majority roundly rejected. 

Independent redistricting commissions, it is true, “have
not  eliminated  the  inevitable  partisan  suspicions  associ- 
ated with political line-drawing.”  Cain, 121 Yale L. J., at