LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

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Since 2004

Tag: partisan

  • Court challengers push contempt charges against redistricting commission

    Court challengers push contempt charges against redistricting commission

    The Republican majority members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission. Top row from left, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Frank LaRose. Bottom row from left Ohio Auditor Keith Faber, House Speaker Bob Cupp, and Senate President Matt Huffman. Official photos.

    BY: SUSAN TEBBEN – Ohio Capital Journal

    Anti-gerrymandering groups are again asking the Ohio Supreme Court to determine if the Ohio Redistricting Commission should be held in contempt, and to force the commission to meet by the end of the week to redraw legislative maps.

    The ACLU, on behalf of several groups including the League of Women Voters of Ohio and the A. Philip Randolph Institution of Ohio and some individual Ohio voters, asked the court to yet again demand answers from the Ohio Redistricting Commission as to why they shouldn’t be held in contempt for making no moves to meet a deadline to draw “entirely new” legislative maps.

    The fourth effort by the ORC was rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court on April 14, and found not to be an “entirely new map” they were ordered to create, but merely a tweak of the third attempt, which was also rejected as unduly partisan.

    The commission has until May 6 to adopt and submit a map, but the groups say the urgency of the situation has “dramatically increased” because of a federal court’s decision to implement the third map found unconstitutional by the supreme court as the map to use during the 2022 election season. The U.S. District Court said they would order the use of the map, which was found to be unduly advantageous to Republicans, if no plan was adopted by May 28.

    “Based on the commission’s conduct to date, this appears to be exactly what the commission is trying to do,” the ACLU wrote to the supreme court. “The Court should not allow the commission to intentionally avoid its constitutional obligations.”

    GOP members of the commission argued that the court did not have the authority to hold them in contempt for several reasons, most important of which was the fact that the commission had passed a map by the court-ordered March 28 date. They said they conducted their legislative duties, and also were protected by the separation of powers doctrine from being held in contempt.

    One member of the state supreme court, Justice Sharon Kennedy, has consistently sided with the Republican members in saying they should not be held in contempt and the court does not have the power to do so.

    The Ohio Supreme Court rejected a previous request to hold the ORC in contempt at the same time they rejected the fourth map by the group.

    The ACLU, however, argues in their most recent challenge for contempt that legislative immunity is not “unlimited” and separation of powers principles do not “constitute an insurmountable barrier to a contempt order against the majority of the commission.”

    “In ordering (the ORC) to reconvene and to draft and adopt a constitutionally valid General Assembly-district plan, this Court is not ‘asserting control’ over purely legislative duties … but simply ensuring that the commission itself undertake those duties,” attorneys said in their Monday filing.

    GOP members of the ORC told the court in the last debate over contempt that they could not be charged as individuals for something decided by the commission as a whole.

    The ACLU called the argument an “improper attempt to evade responsibility” in their Monday filing. The argument also does not hold when it comes to calling a meeting of the commission, the court challengers said. Calling a meeting only requires three commission members, leaving five others “fully responsible for the defiance of the court’s order,” court documents stated.

    Attorneys urged the court to force the commission to convene no later than Friday if they are held in contempt, as a way to “purge” their contempt charges.

    The commission has not announced any plans to meet on or before the May 6 deadline. Democrats, including commission co-chair state Sen. Vernon Sykes, attempted to bring a meeting together on Monday, but ended up alone in front of the room where the ORC has met in the past, having had their offer rejected by every other member of the commission.

    A representative with House Speaker and commission co-chair Bob Cupp said no meetings have been scheduled, and a spokesperson for Senate President Matt Huffman said meeting dates were up to the co-chairs.

  • Congressional map challengers ask court to stop map use

    Congressional map challengers ask court to stop map use

    Photo: Courtesy of the Ohio Supreme Court

    Attorneys for League of Women Voters proposed that the commission be given the maps again, but with specific instructions to fix District 1 in Hamilton County

    BY: SUSAN TEBBEN – Ohio Capital Journal


    The League of Women Voters and a group of Ohioans represented by a national redistricting group have asked the Ohio Supreme Court to keep the state from using recently approved congressional maps.

    “Having embarked on its latest map-drawing journey with an irredeemably broken compass, it is no surprise that the (Ohio Redistricting) Commission has once again found itself lost,” Ohioans led by the National Redistricting Action Fund stated in their court filing.

    The group called the newest map – which breaks the state down into 10 Republican districts, three Democratic districts and two “tossup” districts  – “an extreme partisan outlier again,” putting the state at a “partisan advantage at odds with Ohio’s voting patterns.”

    Because of this, they ask the court to strike down the Ohio Redistricting Commission’s second try at congressional districts, move the candidate filing deadline that was March 4 and “if necessary, itself adopt a constitutional plan as early as March 17.”

    “At this point, the commission cannot be trusted behind the wheel,” attorneys for the group wrote.

    The League of Women Voters stopped short of asking for the court to take over the process, saying “it is premature at this juncture for the court itself to implement a plan.”

    Attorneys for the Ohio league proposed that the commission be given the maps again, but with specific instructions to fix two districts: District 1 in Hamilton and Warren counties and District 15, which stretches from the western and southern sides of Franklin County to the Southern half of Shelby County.

    The LWV, represented by the ACLU of Ohio, also argued an alternative plan written by Harvard professor Dr. Kosuke Imai was brought up to to the commission “but was ignored.”

     A congressional redistricting plan proposed by Harvard professor Dr. Kosuke Imai. The League of Women Voters said this map was “ignored” by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, despite following constitutional redistricting requirements.

    The plan had a 10-6 partisan breakdown, but was never brought up for a formal vote by the commission.

    In court documents included with the LWV’s objection to the newest congressional map, Dr. Imai said his map “demonstrates that it is possible to generate a redistricting plan that is free of partisan bias and compactness problems while complying with the other redistricting criteria.

    Imai was also mentioned in the legislative redistricting court battle, when attorneys said the professor conducted 5,000 simulations of Ohio districts and never came up with the same amount of GOP partisanship in any of the simulations.

    Attorneys for the National Redistricting Action Fund said Ohio’s Republican caucus chose to “let the clock run out” on any efforts by the General Assembly to create a congressional plan, and were slow to act even as the ORC began its first week back after the GA made no decision.

    “The General Assembly seemingly took no action to even attempt to draw a plan itself because it was unwilling to attempt to reach the bipartisan agreement that would be necessary to pass emergency legislation,” Adams’ attorneys wrote.

    After the commission adopted a GOP-created map along party lines, the map challengers say Secretary of State Frank LaRose moved forward with “implementing the new gerrymandered plan,” despite the fact that it hadn’t been (and still hasn’t been) given the go-ahead by the state supreme court.

    The NRAF also argues the map continues to violate the constitution, specifically the provision prohibiting the favoring or disfavoring of one political party over another.

    “This disparity between statewide vote share and congressional seat share is astounding,” attorneys wrote.

    Asking for the court to take over the process is not a new argument state redistricting challengers have made. Attorneys arguing against legislative maps also asked the court to take charge after three attempts by the redistricting commission.

    The NRAF also asked the court to postpone “relevant election deadlines” for the May 3 primary, saying the court has “broad authority to issues orders postponing election deadlines to address harm that would occur if elections were to proceed under an unconstitutional map.”

    Republican commission members have said the power to change elections lies with the General Assembly.