Page:Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n.pdf/42

Rh The Elections Clause both imposes a duty on States and assigns that duty to a particular state actor: In the absence of a valid congressional directive to the contrary, States must draw district lines for their federal representatives. And that duty “shall” be carried out “in each State by the Legislature thereof.”

In Arizona, however, redistricting is not carried out by the legislature. Instead, as the result of a ballot initiative, an unelected body called the Independent Redistricting Commission draws the lines. See ante, at 6–7. The key question in the case is whether the Commission can conduct congressional districting consistent with the directive that such authority be exercised “by the Legislature.”

The majority concedes that the unelected Commission is not “the Legislature” of Arizona. The Court contends instead that the people of Arizona as a whole constitute “the Legislature” for purposes of the Elections Clause, and that they may delegate the congressional districting authority conferred by that Clause to the Commission. Ante, at 25. The majority provides no support for the delegation part of its theory, and I am not sure whether the majority’s analysis is correct on that issue. But even giving the Court the benefit of the doubt in that regard, the Commission is still unconstitutional. Both the Constitution and our cases make clear that “the Legislature” in the Elections Clause is the representative body which makes the laws of the people.

The majority devotes much of its analysis to establishing that the people of Arizona may exercise lawmaking power under their State Constitution. See ante, at 5–6, 25, 27–28. Nobody doubts that. This case is governed, however, by the Federal Constitution. The States do not, in the majority’s words, “retain autonomy to establish their own governmental processes,” ante, at 27, if those