Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-1314_3ea4.pdf
Page Number: 77.0

6 

ARIZONA STATE LEGISLATURE v. ARIZONA 

INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMM’N
 
SCALIA, J., dissenting 

___  (2012)  (slip  op.,  at  5)—Coleman’s  discussion  of  the 
additional jurisdictional issue of standing was quite super-
fluous  and  arguably  nothing  but  dictum.  The  peculiar
decision in Coleman should be charitably ignored. 

The  Court  asserts,  quoting  Raines,  521  U. S.,  at  819– 
820, that the Court’s standing analysis has been “especially 
rigorous  when  reaching  the  merits  of  the  dispute  would
force [the Court] to decide whether an action taken by one
of the other two branches of the Federal Government was 
unconstitutional.”  Ante,  at  14,  n. 12.    The  cases  cited  to 
support  this  dictum  fail  to  do  so;  they  are  merely  cases 
where a determination of unconstitutionality is avoided by
applying  what  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  is  anything
other than normal standing requirements.  It seems to me 
utterly  implausible  that  the  Framers  wanted  federal 
courts limited to traditional judicial cases only when they
were  pronouncing  upon  the  rights  of  Congress  and  the 
President,  and  not  when  they  were  treading  upon  the
powers  of  state  legislatures  and  executives.    Quite  to  the 
contrary,  I  think  they  would  be  all  the  more  averse  to 
unprecedented  judicial  meddling  by  federal  courts  with
the branches of their state governments. 

I would dismiss this case for want of jurisdiction. 

* 

* 

* 

Normally,  having  arrived  at  that  conclusion,  I  would 
express  no  opinion  on  the  merits  unless  my  vote  was 
necessary  to  enable  the  Court  to  produce  a  judgment.    In 
the present case, however, the majority’s resolution of the
merits  question  (“legislature”  means  “the  people”)  is  so 
outrageously wrong, so utterly devoid of textual or historic 
support,  so  flatly  in  contradiction  of  prior  Supreme  Court 
cases,  so  obviously  the  willful  product  of  hostility  to  dis-
tricting  by  state  legislatures,  that  I  cannot  avoid  adding
my vote to the devastating dissent of the Chief Justice.