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Page Number: 26

22 

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

State,  “after  any  apportionment,”  had  not  redistricted  “in
the manner provided by the law thereof.”  The 1941 provi­
sion,  like  the  1911  Act,  thus  accorded  full  respect  to  the
redistricting procedures adopted by the States.  So long as
a  State  has  “redistricted  in  the  manner  provided  by  the 
law thereof ”—as Arizona did by utilizing the independent 
commission  procedure  called  for  by  its  Constitution—the
resulting  redistricting  plan  becomes  the  presumptively 
governing map.20 

The  Arizona  Legislature  characterizes  §2a(c)  as  an 
“obscure provision, narrowed by subsequent developments
to the brink of irrelevance.”  Brief for Appellant 56.  True, 
four of the five default redistricting procedures—operative
only  when  a  State  is  not  “redistricted  in  the  manner  pro­
vided by [state] law”—had “become (because of postenact­
ment  decisions  of  this  Court)  in  virtually  all  situations 
plainly unconstitutional.”  Branch v. Smith, 538 U. S. 254, 
273–274 (2003) (plurality opinion).  Concretely, the default 
procedures  specified  in  §2a(c)(1)–(4)  contemplate  that  a
State would continue to use pre-existing districts following 
a  new  census.  The  one-person,  one-vote  principle  an­
nounced  in  Wesberry  v.  Sanders,  376  U. S.  1  (1964),  how­
ever, would bar those procedures, except in the “unlikely” 
event  that  “the  decennial  census  makes  no  districting
change  constitutionally  necessary,”  Branch,  538  U. S.,  at 
273 (plurality opinion).

Constitutional  infirmity  in  §2a(c)(1)–(4)’s  default  proce­
dures,  however,  does  not  bear  on  the  question  whether  a
State  has  been  “redistricted  in  the  manner  provided  by 
[state]  law.”21    As  just  observed,  Congress  expressly  di­

—————— 

20 Because  a  State  is  required  to  comply  with  the  Federal  Constitu­
tion, the Voting Rights Act, and other federal laws when it draws and
implements  its  district  map,  nothing  in  §2a(c)  affects  a  challenge  to  a 
state  district  map  on  the  ground  that  it  violates  one  or  more  of  those 
federal requirements. 

21 The plurality in Branch v. Smith, 538 U. S. 254, 273 (2003), consid­