INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMM’N
Opinion of the Court
elections had been submitted to a popular vote, resulting in disapproval of the legislature’s measure. State election officials asked the State’s Supreme Court to declare the referendum void. That court rejected the request, holding that the referendum authorized by Ohio’s Constitution, “was a part of the legislative power of the State,” and “nothing in [federal statutory law] or in [the Elections Clause] operated to the contrary.” 241 U. S., at 567. This Court affirmed the Ohio Supreme Court’s judgment. In upholding the state court’s decision, we recognized that the referendum was “part of the legislative power” in Ohio, ibid., legitimately exercised by the people to disapprove the legislation creating congressional districts. For redistricting purposes, Hildebrant thus established, “the Legislature” did not mean the representative body alone. Rather, the word encompassed a veto power lodged in the people. See id., at 569 (Elections Clause does not bar “treating the referendum as part of the legislative power for the purpose of apportionment, where so ordained by the state constitutions and laws”).
Hawke v. Smith involved the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Ohio’s Legislature had ratified the Amendment, and a referendum on that ratification was at issue. Reversing the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision upholding the referendum, we held that “ratification by a State of a constitutional amendment is not an act of legislation within the proper sense of the word.” 253 U. S., at 229. Instead, Article V governing ratification had lodged in “the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States” sole authority to assent to a proposed amendment. Id., at 226. The Court contrasted the ratifying function, exercisable exclusively by a State’s legislature, with “the ordinary business of legislation.” Id., at 229. Davis v. Hildebrant, the Court explained, involved the enactment of legislation, i.e., a redistricting plan, and properly held that “the referendum [was] part of the legislative author-
