Roberts, C. J., dissenting
The Court also overstates the effects of enforcing the plain meaning of the Constitution in this case. There is no dispute that Arizona may continue to use its Commission to draw lines for state legislative elections. The representatives chosen in those elections will then be responsible for congressional redistricting as members of the state legislature, so the work of the Commission will continue to influence Arizona’s federal representation.
Moreover, reading the Elections Clause to require the involvement of the legislature will not affect most other redistricting commissions. As the majority notes, many States have commissions that play an “auxiliary role” in congressional redistricting. Ante, at 8, and nn. 8–9. But in these States, unlike in Arizona, the legislature retains primary authority over congressional redistricting. See Brief for National Conference of State Legislatures as Amicus Curiae 3–17.
The majority also points to a scattered array of election-related laws and constitutional provisions enacted via popular lawmaking that it claims would be “endangered” by interpreting the Elections Clause to mean what it says. Ante, at 33. Reviewing the constitutionality of these far-flung provisions is well outside the scope of this case. Suffice it to say that none of them purports to do what the Arizona Constitution does here: set up an unelected, unaccountable institution that permanently and totally displaces the legislature from the redistricting process. “[T]his wolf comes as a wolf.” Morrison v. Olson, 487 U. S. 654, 699 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting).
Absent from the majority’s portrayal of the high motives that inspired the Arizona Commission is any discussion of
could choose a 20-year-old Congressman, a 25-year-old Senator, or a foreign President. But see Art. I, §2, cl. 2; §3, cl. 3; Art. II, §1, cl. 5. Term Limits instead relied on analysis of the text, structure, and history of the Constitution—all factors that cut strongly against the majority’s position today.
