Arizona GOP considers suing to redraw congressional map

By Zachery Schmidt
The Center Square

The Republican majority in the Arizona Legislature is contemplating legal options to redraw the state’s congressional map in time for the 2028 elections.

Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, told The Center Square on Wednesday that the Legislature is “considering litigation to compel the redistricting commission to convene and redraw the [congressional] map.”

Petersen made his comments after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Monday in Louisiana v. Callais. The court ruled Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act does not mandate states to create additional minority-majority districts in their congressional maps. Section 2 implemented a nationwide ban on “the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color,” according to the National Archives.

One of the factors that the current Arizona map considers is race, according to Petersen. If the redistricting commission, which is made up of two Republicans, two Democrats and one independent, redrew the state’s congressional map, it could no longer consider race when drawing districts, he said.

“These lines should be colorblind,” Petersen said. “They shouldn’t discriminate based off of race.”

Petersen said Arizona’s court system could compel the redistricting commission to make a new congressional map.

Arizona Republicans are “doing an analysis on it right now,” Petersen said. Republicans control a majority in both houses of the Legislature.

If the Legislature decides to sue, he said it would file the lawsuit “pretty soon.”

The process for Arizona’s congressional map to be redrawn will be slower than in a state where the legislature redraws it, the Senate president noted.

He said if Arizona redrew its congressional map, it would affect the 2028 races rather than this year’s.

Petersen called the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais the “right decision.”

“We shouldn’t be racist,” he said.

On the other side, state Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Glendale, told The Center Square on Wednesday that the decision made by the Supreme Court was “devastating.”

She noted the Voting Rights Act was created “because of explicit racism in the redistricting process that intentionally disenfranchised Black voters, in particular in the South.”

“We are not at a place as a country where that type of systemic racism has been solved,” Ortiz said. “This decision set us back significantly.”

Ortiz said it is a “good thing” Arizona has an independent redistricting commission.

“Any attempts to get in the way of the normal cycle of the independent redistricting commission [are] just blatant cheating, and it’s not right,” she said.

Ortiz noted Petersen’s idea of taking legal action in an attempt to have Arizona’s congressional map redrawn “is absolutely ridiculous.”

“This is nefarious stuff, and we have to call it for what it is. We have to stay vigilant in the face of a force that is trying to drag us back to the Jim Crow days. We are not going to go back quietly,” she said.

Arizona needs to do everything it can to protect its “current independent redistricting process,” Ortiz noted.

She added that Arizona needs to ensure its minority communities can “continue to be able to have their voices heard and be able to pick their politicians” rather than “politicians picking their voters.”

The Center Square reached out to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ office about Arizona potentially redrawing its congressional map, but did not receive a response before press time.