Page:Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n.pdf/79

2 term limits on that State’s Members of Congress, finding “little significance” in the fact that such term limits were adopted by popular referendum. U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U. S. 779, 822, n. 32 (1995). One year later, it held unconstitutional a ballot initiative that would have prevented the enactment of laws under which “ ‘homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships [would] constitute or otherwise be the basis of … any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination.’ ” Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 624 (1996). The Court neither gave deference to state lawmaking nor said anything about the virtues of direct democracy. It instead declared that the result of the ballot initiative was an aberration—that “[i]t is not within our constitutional tradition to enact laws of this sort.” Id., at 633. But if “constitutional tradition” is the measuring stick, then it is hard to understand how the Court condones a redistricting practice that was unheard of for nearly 200 years after the ratification of the Constitution and that conflicts with the express constitutional command that election laws “be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” Art. I, §4.

The Court’s lack of respect for ballot initiatives is evident not only in what it has done, but in what it has failed to do. Just this Term, the Court repeatedly refused to review cases in which the Courts of Appeals had set aside state laws passed through ballot initiative. See, e.g., County of Maricopa v. Lopez-Valenzuela, 575 U. S. ___ (2015) (, dissenting from denial of certiorari) (state constitutional amendment denying bail for illegal aliens arrested in certain circumstances); Herbert v. Kitchen, 574 U. S. ___ (2014) (state constitutional amendment retaining traditional definition of marriage); Smith v. Bishop, 574 U. S. ___ (2014) (same); Rainey v. Bostic, 574 U. S. ___ (2014) (same); Walker v. Wolf, 574 U. S. ___ (2014) (same). It did so despite warnings that its