INDEPENDENT REDISTRICTING COMM’N
Roberts, C. J., dissenting
adopting new congressional districts, and the Governor exercised his veto power under the State Constitution. As noted above, the Minnesota secretary of state defended the veto on the ground that “the Legislature” in the Elections Clause referred not just to “the two houses of the legislature” but to “the entire legislative power of the state … however exercised.” This Court rejected that argument, reiterating that the term “Legislature” meant “the representative body which made the laws of the people.” 285 U. S., at 365 (quoting Hawke, 253 U. S., at 227). The Court nevertheless went on to hold that the Elections Clause did not prevent a State from applying the usual rules of its legislative process—including a gubernatorial veto—to election regulations prescribed by the legislature. 285 U. S., at 373. As in Hildebrant, the legislature was not displaced, nor was it redefined; it just had to start on a new redistricting plan.
The majority initially describes Hildebrant and Smiley as holding that “redistricting is a legislative function, to be performed in accordance with the State’s prescriptions for lawmaking, which may include the referendum and the Governor’s veto.” Ante, at 19. That description is true, so far as it goes. But it hardly supports the result the majority reaches here. There is a critical difference between allowing a State to supplement the legislature’s role in the legislative process and permitting the State to supplant the legislature altogether. See Salazar, 541 U. S., at 1095 (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (“to be consistent with Article I, §4, there must be some limit on the State’s ability to define lawmaking by excluding the legislature itself”). Nothing in Hildebrant, Smiley, or any other precedent supports the majority’s conclusion that imposing some constraints on the legislature justifies deposing it entirely.
