Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/18-281_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 11.0

8 

VIRGINIA HOUSE OF DELEGATES v. BETHUNE-HILL 

Opinion of the Court 

emphasizes its role in enacting redistricting legislation in 
particular.  The House observes that, under Virginia law, 
“members  of  the  Senate  and  of  the  House  of  Delegates  of 
the  General  Assembly  shall  be  elected  from  electoral 
districts  established  by  the  General  Assembly.”    Va. 
Const.,  Art.  2,  §6.    The  House  has  standing,  it  contends, 
because  it  is  “the  legislative  body  that  actually  drew  the 
redistricting  plan,”  and  because,  the  House  asserts,  any 
remedial order will transfer redistricting authority from it 
to  the  District  Court.    Brief  for  Appellants  23,  26–28  (in-
ternal quotation marks omitted).  But the Virginia consti-
tutional  provision  the  House  cites  allocates  redistricting 
authority  to  the  “General  Assembly,”  of  which  the  House 
constitutes only a part. 
  That  fact  distinguishes  this  case  from  Arizona  State 
Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n, 
576  U. S.  ___  (2015),  in  which  the  Court  recognized  the 
standing  of  the  Arizona  House  and  Senate—acting  to- 
gether—to  challenge  a  referendum  that  gave  redistricting 
authority  exclusively  to  an  independent  commission, 
thereby  allegedly  usurping  the  legislature’s  authority 
under  the  Federal  Constitution  over  congressional  redis-
tricting.  In contrast to this case, in Arizona State Legisla-
ture  there  was  no  mismatch  between  the  body  seeking  to 
litigate  and  the  body  to  which  the  relevant  constitutional 
provision allegedly assigned exclusive redistricting author-
ity.  See 576 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 11–12).  Just as 
individual  members  lack  standing  to  assert  the  institu-
tional  interests  of  a  legislature,  see  Raines,  521  U. S.,  at 
829,4  a  single  House  of  a  bicameral  legislature  lacks  ca-
pacity to assert interests belonging to the legislature as a 
whole. 
  Moreover,  in  Arizona  State  Legislature,  the  challenged 

—————— 

4 Raines held that individual Members of Congress lacked standing to 

challenge the Line Item Veto Act.