Cassandra Nevel
Professor Morgan
Introduction to Law
November 8th, 2015
Harris, et al v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, et al.

The following paper analyzes a current Supreme Court case that has yet to be decided, Harris, et al v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, et al., from a legal perspective. The legal issue in question is can political motivations or the desire to achieve preclearance by the Justice Department allow for the unequal drawing of legislative districts, even after the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County., Ala. v. Holder? Part I focuses on briefly describing facts of the case to clarify the current issue as well as the concept of one person, one vote. Part II discusses the Voting Rights Act of …show more content…
This referendum was an attempt on the part of the people to end the process of gerrymandering, or dividing the state into election districts to favor one political party by ensuring certain voting population groupings. The Commission is made up of two Republicans, two Democrats, and a unanimously selected fifth member of no political party. The Commission split the state into thirty legislative districts, using the Arizona Constitution and the need for approval by the Depart of Justice as principals, and created an average population deviation of 2.2% between the districts. Eleven of these districts are defined as right-to-elect districts, meaning they were created to give minority populations opportunities to ensure their vote would be heard by the process of grouping. Mr. Harris, the petitioner, represents a voter in Arizona who is now in a legislative district where there is negative population deviation meaning his district is over-populated and thus, his vote is diluted in comparison. He claims this dilution violates the constitutional principle of one person, one vote within the Fourteenth Amendment that was established through precedent by the Supreme Court, most notably in Reynolds V. Simms which stated that electoral districts had be roughly equal in …show more content…
Their compelling state interest in ensuring that the new district map meet the scrutiny of the Justice Department in accordance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act was to ensure that no state with a history of disregarding black voters through enacting laws such as reading requirements to vote or racially skewing redistricting to favor whites could continue these methods by forcing government regulation of these states. Arizona was covered by Section Five of this act and thus, had to prove in the Commission's redistricting scheme that it was not attempting to disregard minority votes, else it face financial consequence by the hands of the federal government. Harris responds to this argument by citing the 2013 case of Shelby County., Ala. v. Holder, which ended Section 4b and 5 of the Voting Rights Act due to the fact the states it primarily affected were based on forty year old data on racial voting discrimination and no longer relevant. Harris would use the fact that the primary government interest in creating population deviations for redistricting no longer exists as evidence for their conclusion that the redistricting scheme should be performed