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Members of the Independent Redistricting Commission appear ready to recraft proposed congressional maps to help keep more of Tucson together and separate the largely non-Hispanic areas of Yuma from the rest of the city. 

Seven years after it was appointed to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative districts, the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission is preparing to shut down operations following the settlement of the final lawsuit against it.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission’s right to draw congressional boundaries opened the door for a second, long-dormant challenge to the districts to move forward.

Claiming illegal political motives, attorneys for Republicans are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to void the lines drawn by the Independent Redistricting Commission for the state’s 30 legislative districts.

A bid by state lawmakers to take back the power to draw congressional lines is legally flawed and should be rejected, the lead attorney for the Independent Redistricting Commission told the nation’s high court.

Republicans lost a federal court case seeking to force a redraw of Arizona’s legislative district map. But the status quo might not be so bad for the GOP.

A federal three-judge panel ruled that the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission does not have to redraw any portion of its legislative district map, rejecting the claims from Republican challengers who that alleged the map violated the one-person-one-vote principle.

The Arizona Legislature asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to give its members the right to draw the lines for the state’s nine congressional districts.

Arizonans tired of the politics surrounding the once-a-decade legislative and congressional redistricting process voted to pull the job from the Legislature in 2000 and give it to an independent commission. But getting politics out of the high-stakes game has proven difficult.

A panel of three federal judges has dismissed a Republican-led lawsuit brought against Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission. The suit challenged the underlying legal premise of the commission itself.