The Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously upheld an Arizona state legislative map drawn by an independent redistricting commission, rejecting a challenge from Republicans who said the map was too favorable to Democrats

He added that factors other than partisanship appeared to explain the disparities in Arizona.

That's... Just not true. The opinion is fairly clear that partisanship was a factor. A big one.

Changes in the boundaries of District 8, however, proved more controversial. District 8 leaned Republican. A Democrat-appointed Commissioner asked the mapping specialist to look into modifications that might make District 8 politically more competitive. The specialist returned with a draft that shifted the boundary line between District 8 and District 11 so as to keep several communities with high minority populations together in District 8. The two Republican-appointed Commissioners objected that doing so would favor Democrats by “hyperpacking” Republicans into other districts; they added that the Commission should either favor political competitiveness throughout the State or not at all. Id., at 1059 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Democrat-appointed proponent of the change replied that District 8 had historically provided minority groups a good opportunity to elect their candidate of choice—an opportunity that the changes would preserve.

It's only that appellants had quite a road ahead of them to prove that partisanship was "predominant," as opposed to merely "significant" or "important" or something to that effect.

they support their claim that the plan reflects unreasonable use of partisan considerations by pointing to the fact that almost all the Democratic-leaning districts are somewhat underpopulated and almost all the Republicanleaning districts are somewhat overpopulated. That is likely true. See 993 F. Supp. 2d, at 1049 (providing a chart with percentage deviation figures by district). But that fact may well reflect the tendency of minority populations in Arizona in 2010 to vote disproportionately for Democrats.

I always love when SCOTUS comes in with unsupported claims. None of the parties claimed this, no matter. I'm sure some law clerk Google'd 'why I am right,' '.com,' and proceeded from there.

/r/law Thread Link - nytimes.com