Redistricting -- litigation update

This week, counsel for the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission filed, in Maricopa County Superior Court, a Motion to Dismiss the amended complaint filed earlier this month in the Republican (Tea Party) effort to get the new Congressional districts thrown out.

Recall that this suit raises NO substantive claims (unlike the federal court challenge to the state legislature districts, which alleges Republicans' voting voice was unconstitutionally diluted solely to benefit the Democratic Party). All of the claims in this suit are specious, based almost exclusively on innuendo and rehash the drama from October and November when Gov. Brewer and the state senate got spanked by the Arizona Supreme Court.

The Motion to Dismiss is in the first 22 pages of this pdf. Attached to it (in the first pdf) are Exhibits A through E. Exhibits E and F are here and F through J are here. The conclusion is a simple, one paragraph summary showing how blatantly absurd plaintiff claims in this lawsuit really are.

The Complaint asserts a series of violations of constitutional requirements that do not exist or that depend on absurd interpretations of the constitutional procedures. In addition, the alleged open-meeting violations for which Plaintiffs seek relief fail to allege an actual violation of the open meeting clause in Article 4, and fail to seek a lawful remedy. Accordingly, the Commission respectfully requests that the Court dismiss the Complaint in its entirety.

The sense that I get when reading the amended complaint and this Motion to Dismiss is that all of these issues have been dealt with previously. One has to wonder why the plaintiff group feels compelled to cause expenditure of so much taxpayer money for things that are highly unlikely to be changed in court.