Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission

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Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission

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Conference of June 13, 2019

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
14-232	D. Ariz.	Dec 8, 2015 Tr.Aud.	Apr 20, 2016	8-0	Breyer	OT 2015

Holding: The federal district court did not err in upholding Arizona's redistricting plan because the plan's population deviations predominantly reflected efforts to achieve compliance with the Voting Rights Act, not to secure political advantage for the Democratic Party.

Judgment: Affirmed, 8-0, in an opinion by Justice Breyer on April 20, 2016.

Opinion analysis: A narrow, but unanimous, ruling on Arizona redistricting (Amy Howe)
Argument analysis: Justices hard to read on Arizona redistricting plan (Amy Howe)
Argument preview: Does “one person, one vote” yield to partisan politics or the Voting Rights Act? (Amy Howe)
The new look at "one person, one vote," made simple (Lyle Denniston)
Review of new Arizona election case narrowed (Lyle Denniston)
A new look at race and politics in redistricting (Lyle Denniston)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Aug 25 2014	Statement as to jurisdiction filed. (Response due September 29, 2014)
Sep 15 2014	Order extending time to file response to statement as to jurisdiction to and including October 29, 2014.
Sep 17 2014	Waiver of right of appellee Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett to respond filed.
Oct 20 2014	Order further extending time to file response to statement as to jurisdiction to and including November 13, 2014.
Nov 13 2014	Motion to dismiss or affirm filed by appellees Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, et al.
Dec 2 2014	Reply of appellants Wesley W. Harris, et al. filed. (Distributed)
Dec 3 2014	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 9, 2015.
Jun 25 2015	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of June 29, 2015.
Jun 30 2015	PROBABLE JURISDICTION NOTED.
Jul 24 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs, in support of either party or of neither party, received from counsel for the appellants.
Jul 29 2015	The time to file the joint appendix and appellants' brief on the merits is extended to and including September 4, 2015.
Jul 29 2015	The time to file appellees' brief on the merits is extended to and including October 26, 2015.
Jul 31 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs in support of either party or of neither party received from counsel for appellee Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan.
Sep 4 2015	Brief of appellee Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan in support of appellants filed.
Sep 4 2015	Joint appendix filed.
Sep 4 2015	Brief of appellants Wesley W. Harris, et al. filed.
Sep 10 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Southern Coalition for Social Justice in support of neither party filed.
Oct 9 2015	SET FOR ARGUMENT on Tuesday, DECEMBER 8, 2015
Oct 19 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs, in support of either party or of neither party, received from counsel for the appellee Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.
Oct 19 2015	Record requested from U.S.D.C. District of Arizona.
Oct 26 2015	Brief of appellee Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission filed.
Oct 27 2015	CIRCULATED
Oct 30 2015	Motion for divided argument filed by appellee Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan in support of appellants.
Nov 2 2015	Brief amicus curiae of the United States filed. (Distributed)
Nov 2 2015	Brief amici curiae of Former Officials of the U.S. Department of Justice Who Enforced the Voting Rights Act filed. (Distributed)
Nov 2 2015	Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument filed.
Nov 2 2015	Brief amici curiae of The Navajo Nation and Leonard Gorman filed. (Distributed)
Nov 2 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Samuel S. Wang, Ph.D. filed. (Distributed)
Nov 2 2015	Brief amici curiae of Professors Nicholas Stephanoupolis and Simon Jackman filed. (Distributed)
Nov 24 2015	Motion for divided argument filed by appellee Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan in support of appellants. GRANTED.
Nov 24 2015	Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument GRANTED.
Nov 25 2015	Reply of appellant Wesley W. Harris, et al. (Distributed)
Nov 25 2015	Letter and 8 1/2 x 11 inch copies of exhibits that appear in appellants' brief on the merits received.
Nov 25 2015	Reply of appellee Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan in support of appellants filed. (Distributed)
Dec 8 2015	Argued. For appellants: Mark F. Hearne, II, St. Louis, Mo. For appellee Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan in support of appellants: Mark Brnovich, Arizona Attorney General, Phoenix, Ariz. For appellee Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission: Paul M. Smith, Washington, D. C.; and Sarah E. Harrington, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. (for United States, as amicus curiae.)
Apr 20 2016	Adjudged to be AFFIRMED. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
May 23 2016	JUDGMENT ISSUED

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The Supreme Court will release orders from the June 13 conference on Monday at 9:30 a.m.; John Elwood's "Relist Watch" compiles the petitions that were relisted for this conference.
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- Department of Commerce v. New York
  (1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker -- including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials -- without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis; and (3) whether the secretary’s decision to add a citizenship question to the decennial census violated the enumeration clause of the U.S. Constitution.
- Lamone v. Benisek
  In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.
- Kisor v. Wilkie
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.
- Rucho v. Common Cause
  (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
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  (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
- Gamble v. United States
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.
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Recent Decisions
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- Parker Drilling Management Services, Ltd. v. Newton Under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, when federal law addresses the relevant issue, state law is not adopted as surrogate federal law on the Outer Continental Shelf.
- Return Mail Inc. v. United States Postal Service The federal government is not a “person” capable of petitioning the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to institute patent review proceedings under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.
- Azar v. Allina Health Services Because the Department of Health and Human Services neglected its statutory notice-and-comment obligations when it revealed a new policy that dramatically – and retroactively – reduced Medicare payments to hospitals serving low-income patients, its policy must be vacated.
- Fort Bend County, Texas v. Davis The charge-filing precondition to suit set out in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not a jurisdictional requirement.
- Mont v. United States Pretrial detention later credited as time served for a new conviction tolls a supervised-release term under 18 U.S.C. §3624(e), even if the court must make the tolling calculation after learning whether the time will be credited.
- Taggart v. Lorenzen A creditor may be held in civil contempt for violating a bankruptcy court’s discharge order if there is no fair ground of doubt as to whether the order barred the creditor’s conduct.
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Current Relists
- Jordan v. City of Darien, Georgia Whether the existence of probable cause defeats a First Amendment retaliatory arrest claim as a matter of law.
- Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (1) Whether Oregon violated the free speech and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment by compelling the Kleins to design and create a custom wedding cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding ritual in violation of their sincerely held religious beliefs; (2) whether the Supreme Court should overrule Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith; and (3) whether the Supreme Court should reaffirm Smith’s hybrid-rights doctrine, applying strict scrutiny to free exercise claims that implicate other fundamental rights, and resolve the circuit split over the doctrine’s precedential status.
- McGee v. McFadden (1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit erred when it found no constitutional error when the state failed to disclose Brady evidence, a letter from a jailhouse snitch, until the post-trial hearing for a motion for a new trial; (2) whether the state and federal courts’ decisions were contrary to Giglio v. United States, United States v. Bagley, Brady v. Maryland and Napue v. Illinois when the state failed to disclose material impeachment evidence, a letter from a jailhouse snitch who testified that petitioner confessed to him; and (3) whether the state and federal courts erred in finding that trial counsel rendered effective assistance of counsel when he failed to interview Michael Jones and call him as a witness.
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Cases argued	69
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Summary reversals	5
Merits cases granted to date	73

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