Just one day after affirming Arizona’s Independent
Redistricting Commission’s (IRC) ability to create the boundaries for
congressional districts, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will take up a
case challenging the population distribution in the legislative districts that
the IRC set. So the Republican-led spending spree to fight the voter-created
IRC continues.
Because the IRC is funded by the state, more tax dollars
will be spent litigating an issue that should already be settled. A recent news
article reported that the full cost of the redistricting legal challenges is
more than $5.3 million,
including $1.73 million the IRC has already had to spend in the case the Supreme
Court just agreed to hear. Arizona taxpayers can expect to continue shelling out
cash for this Republican power grab.
A group of Republican Party activists are leading the
charge with this lawsuit, and they seem to be pushing a partisan agenda. That
is exactly what most voters in Arizona wanted to keep out of the redistricting
process when they created the IRC by citizen
initiative in 2000. Most Arizona voters want redistricting out of the hands
of the Legislature. They clearly prefer an independent organization in charge to
help remove partisanship and personal political ambition from this important
process.
The Republican leaders and activists in this state must
answer to Arizona’s voters. In the opinionJustice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote regarding the most recently decided IRC case she said,
“Arizona voters sought to restore ‘the core principle of republican government,’
namely, ‘that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way
around.’” We agree.
