U.S. Supreme Court shouldn’t put Ohio redistricting ruling on hold, plaintiffs say

Supreme Court

Plaintiffs in a case that challenges the legality of Ohio's congressional maps are battling over whether the U.S. Supreme Court should delay an ordered remap in Ohio until after it issues decisions in gerrymandering cases from Maryland and North Carolina. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)AP

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Supreme Court shouldn’t let Ohio delay redrawing its congressional maps until after an upcoming high court ruling on other states’ congressional maps, say redistricting reform advocates.

Doing so “risks inflicting irreparable harm” on Ohio voters who’ve been hurt by gerrymandered political districts, say the advocates, who filed a case that overturned the state of Ohio’s congressional maps earlier this month.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio filed a brief at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in response to the state of Ohio’s request that the nation’s highest court stay a lower court’s order to remap the districts by June 14.

“Drawing a map won’t harm the state,” said a statement from ACLU of Ohio Legal Director Freda Levenson. " And any impact the decision in the other two cases might have on our case can be taken into account before any new map is implemented. Starting the remedial proceedings, as the trial court ordered, is needed to ensure that a remedial map can be in place for the 2020 election.”

On May 3, a three-judge federal panel ruled that the state’s congressional maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered and ordered drawing of new maps in time for the 2020 election. The state’s most recent 2011 remap, which was orchestrated by the state’s Republicans, gave the GOP a 12-to-4 seat advantage in Congress even though the state has been considered a “swing” state in presidential elections.

Plaintiffs in the case said Republicans packed the maximum number of their opponents’ voters into the fewest possible districts, and put the rest into places they wouldn’t be concentrated enough to affect the general election outcome. They contend the rigged congressional maps violate the Constitution by essentially taking away voters’ ability to select candidates in a general election.

Monday’s legal briefs noted that even though the city of Cincinnati is heavily Democratic and that a district that respects city limits would give the party an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice to Congress, “Democratic voters in Cincinnati were split” between two districts “to ensure that they would never have that opportunity." Map drawers packed Columbus-area Democrats into a district that they called the “Franklin County Sinkhole,” to transform surrounding districts “from being competitive to safe Republican districts.”

They drew another district between Cleveland and Toledo along the banks of Lake Erie known as “the snake on the lake” to force a runoff between two Democratic incumbents, and split highly Democratic Summit County into four districts to dilute its vote, even though the county could have fit into a single district.

The plaintiffs argued that delaying the court-ordered remap would “risk inflicting irreparable harm” because a new map must be in place later this year and starting the redrawing in June “ensures that the remedial process can move forward in an orderly manner, and that any remedial map can be in place in a timely fashion.”

Ohio officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay any Ohio remap until after the Supreme Court rules on the legality of Maryland and North Carolina congressional maps in cases that are expected to clarify the constitutionality of drawing maps that disproportionately favor one party. Its legal filing said that if the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decisions require the lower court to re-examine its conclusions in the Ohio case, “then the General Assembly will have been needlessly pressured into either repealing a validly enacted law or wasting resources trying to accommodate a mooted decision."

They also argued the existing districts are fair, and that generating the new congressional maps by next month “risks sowing chaos and undermining the public interest in an orderly election process.”

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in the North Carolina and Maryland cases by late June.