Supreme Court rejects Ohio legislative maps, full May primary unlikely
The Ohio Supreme Court struck down the third set of state House and Senate maps late Wednesday, effectively ending any hope of a May 3rd primary with both legislative and statewide races.
The decision marks the third time the Ohio Supreme Court has rejected legislative maps drawn by the Ohio Redistricting Commission. Once again, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, was the deciding vote in a 4-3 decision.
The Ohio Supreme Court ordered the Ohio Redistricting Commission to draw a new set of state House and Senate maps by March 28.
In its decision, the court’s majority pointed to a flawed process that led to a flawed product. It also made a suggestion for the next round of mapmaking: draft maps in public, convene frequent meetings and use a different mapmaker.
“The commission should retain an independent map drawer – who answers to all commission members, not only to the Republican legislative leaders – to draft a plan through a transparent process,” the court wrote in its decision, which did not list a specific author.
The commission needs something else, according to the court’s majority: political will.
“Resolving this self-created chaos thus depends not on the number of hands on the computer mouse but, rather, on the political will to honor the people’s call to end partisan gerrymandering,” according to the court’s decision.
In their dissent, two justices vehemently disagreed: “The majority’s decree today is an exercise of raw political power. Nothing less. Nothing more.”
By invalidating the maps, the court effectively ends any chance that Ohio will hold a primary for all statewide, legislative, congressional and local races on May 3. Election officials had been working to send ballots with the now-rejected statehouse districts to voters in the military and overseas as soon as Friday.
Now, Ohio lawmakers will be tasked with either splitting or delaying primary elections – a costly decision Republicans who control the Legislature had hoped to avoid.
Maps favor Republicans
The rejected maps could have given the GOP a 54-45 advantage in the Ohio House and an 18-15 edge in the Senate. Those numbers matched the statewide voting preferences of Ohioans, which averaged 54% for Republican statewide candidates and 46% for Democratic ones during the past decade.
But Democrats and voting rights activists argued that Republicans crafted maps that appeared proportional but in reality were anything but. The maps passed without Democratic support, which meant they could only last four years.
Stanford University professor Jonathan Rodden, who analyzed the maps for groups suing over them, wrote that the GOP created “a very hard ceiling” on the number of districts Democrats could win – even in a strong Democratic year.
Republicans contended that Democrats and those suing over the maps were moving the goalposts. At first, those suing complained about the number of Democratic districts that fell below 51%. When mapmakers fixed that problem, Democrats took issue with districts that fell below 52%.
Ultimately, the court sided with opponents of these statehouse maps, sending the Ohio Redistricting Commission back to the drawing board for the fourth time.
“To be clear, the presence of toss-up districts in the plan is not alone the basis of our determination,” according to the decision. But taken as a whole, the maps favored the Republican party over the Democratic one. “The remarkably one-sided distribution of toss-up districts is evidence of an intentionally biased map, and it leads to partisan asymmetry.
A messy process
The mapmaking process was, once again, a problem. These maps were late, approved after a court-imposed deadline. The Ohio Supreme Court scheduled – then later postponed – a hearing to consider whether seven members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission should be held in contempt of court for missing the court’s deadline to approve new maps.
Senate President Matt Huffman and House Speaker Bob Cupp, both Lima Republicans, disproportionately controlled the mapmaking process, the court ruled, adding that “their nearly exclusive control over the first two rounds of map drawing was strong evidence of partisan intent.”
The court noted that Democrats on the commission weren’t given a copy of the maps until the day they were asked to vote on them.
The Ohio Supreme Court already rejected two versions of state House and Senate maps. The court took issue with both how the maps were drawn – behind closed doors with little to no public input – and their partisan results.
Language in the Ohio Constitution, approved by voters in 2015, prohibits the Ohio Supreme Court from drawing state House and Senate maps.
What happens to the primary?
Ohio lawmakers could move the entire May 3rd primary. Republicans were unwilling to do so last week when the court had not yet made decisions on Statehouse or congressional maps.
Huffman pitched the idea of holding two primaries, one for statewide candidates and local candidates and issues on May 3 and another for legislative, congressional and other candidates that require districts later. That could cost taxpayers an extra $20 million to $25 million.
If lawmakers want to keep the primary on one date, Huffman said the earliest it could be held is in July. An Ohio Senate spokesman said lawmakers were reviewing the decision to determine a path forward.
Sen. Cecil Thomas, D-North Avondale, has proposed moving the primary to June 28. “It’s a win, win all the way around,” he said Monday.
A federal lawsuit is also pending that could force the Ohio Supreme Court to adopt state House and Senate maps it just rejected.
What did the dissenters say?
Once again, the redistricting decision revealed a harsh divide on the seven-member court.
In a dissenting opinion, Justices Pat DeWine and Sharon Kennedy accuse the majority of ordering “electoral chaos” and bringing Ohio “to the brink of a constitutional crisis.”
Justice Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat and former secretary of state, responded that the court isn’t a rubber stamp and doesn’t create a crisis by enforcing the requirements of the Ohio Constitution.
Brunner and Kennedy are running for chief justice in this year’s election to replace O’Connor who cannot run again due to judicial age limits.
DeWine and Kennedy said the majority – Brunner, Michael Donnelly, O’Connor and Melody Stewart – supplant the voter’s will with their own policy preferences. “In doing so, it threatens the very legitimacy of this court.”
They argue that the four-justice majority moved the goalposts for what was expected of mapmakers, changing the metrics.
The two Republicans also criticize the majority’s suggestion that the seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission work together to draft maps in public.
“Do the members vote on every toggle of the mouse? Solve disputes through games of rock, paper, scissors? Or is it more of a scrum, with the strongest prevailing?” they wrote.
DeWine and Kennedy wrote: “Unmoored from the plain language of the Ohio Constitution or any basic notions of judicial restraint, the majority has injected needless uncertainty and confusion into the 2022 election cycle.”
Justice Patrick Fischer, a Republican, concurred in part with DeWine and Kennedy and wrote a separate dissent that held that the court didn’t have the authority to review maps that would only be in place for four years.
This story will be updated.
Read the decision here:
Reporter Anna Staver contributed to this article.
Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Akron Beacon Journal, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
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