A panel of federal judges on Friday ruled Ohio legislators violated the Constitution in drawing congressional district lines that unfairly hindered Democratic chances at winning seats. The three judges, who sit on the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, ruled in favor of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which sued claiming the districts unfairly pack Democratic voters into some districts and crack them between others, diluting their political power. That test, becoming known in redistricting parlance as cracking and packing, has been the standard other judicial panels have used to strike down district lines in Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland and North Carolina. ADVERTISEMENT Friday’s ruling is similar to one issued last week in Michigan, where a court struck down congressional and legislative district lines. The three judges said Ohio state legislators had gone too far in drawing lines that aided Republican candidates. “We are convinced by the evidence that this partisan gerrymander was intentional and effective and that no legitimate justification accounts for its extremity. Performing our analysis district by district, we conclude that the 2012 map dilutes the votes of Democratic voters by packing and cracking them into districts that are so skewed toward one party that the electoral outcome is predetermined,” the judges wrote. The district lines drawn after the 2010 Census, first used in the 2012 elections, have given Republicans a lock on Ohio’s congressional delegation. The GOP holds 12 of the state’s 16 seats, even though Republicans won only 52 percent of the total congressional vote in 2018. Before the 2010 Republican landslide and the subsequent redistricting process, Democrats had held 10 of 18 seats. Ohio legislators are almost certain to appeal the ruling, which would go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court is already considering political gerrymandering cases out of Maryland and North Carolina. A decision in those cases is likely by the end of the court’s term in June, well before any deadline for the 2020 elections. The next round of reapportionment and redistricting will be different in Ohio. In 2018, voters approved a constitutional amendment that would require new district lines win input from the minority party in the state legislature. Barring that agreement, a political commission made up of a bipartisan group of appointees would be tasked with drawing district lines.<doc-sep>The suit was filed and argued by the American Civil Liberties Union. Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat from Toledo, testified at the two-week trial that her district, which winds along the shore of Lake Erie all the way to Cleveland and is derisively nicknamed “The Snake on the Lake,’’ was the epitome of extreme gerrymandering. The trial revealed that Republican mapmakers operated out of a hotel room they called “the bunker,’’ and in one email, a national consultant referred to downtown Columbus, which is heavily Democratic, as “dog meat” territory. Republicans’ representatives argued at trial that the maps were drawn to protect incumbents of both parties and that there was nothing illegal in doing so. The three judges, two of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents and one by a Republican president, disagreed. “We conclude that the 2012 map dilutes the votes of Democratic voters by packing and cracking them into districts that are so skewed toward one party that the electoral outcome is predetermined,” the judges wrote in their 301-page decision. In the cases now before the Supreme Court, a central issue is whether courts can draw a bright line between acceptable political maps and ones whose partisan aims overstep constitutional bounds, a question the justices have struggled with for decades. Chief Justice John Roberts has openly worried that the court could be perceived as acting in a partisan way if it intervenes in such inherently political decisions. But after a series of lower courts have thrown out partisan maps, “it’s becoming harder and harder for the Supreme Court to claim that there’s no possible way for courts to manage claims like these,” said Justin Levitt, the associate dean of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “It shows that courts can and do manage these cases just fine, with reasonable opinions that don’t look simply like the judges are wearing partisan hats.” In Pennsylvania, a State Supreme Court ruling last year led to new, less partisan districts that in midterm elections helped Democrats net three Republican-held seats in the House of Representatives. The United States Supreme Court let the state court decision stand.<doc-sep>Last week, three federal judges -- two appointed by Democratic presidents and one by a Republican -- unanimously ruled in a blistering opinion that, in 2011, Republicans illegally created “an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander” of Ohio congressional districts to deprive voters of their rights. The court prohibited use of Ohio’s current congressional map for the 2020 presidential election and ordered the state to enact a new plan by June 14. A week after the ruling, the GOP-run Ohio legislature has taken no visible action to move ahead to create a constitutional redistricting plan. The three judges who made the ruling also refused to stay its order while an appeal is made to the U.S. Supreme Court, accusing Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost of trying to retry the case. Yost’s appeal to the high court argues that, with Supreme Court rulings anticipated soon in two other states’ gerrymandering lawsuits, those decisions could impact Ohio’s case. Hearing the case in Ohio are 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Karen Nelson Moore, an appointee of Bill Clinton whose chambers are in Cleveland, and two U.S. District judges for the Southern District of Ohio in Cincinnati: Judges Timothy S. Black, an appointee of Barack Obama; and Michael H. Watson, an appointee of George W. Bush. Their 301-page opinion singled out for criticism the “squiggly” redistricting of Hamilton County, the “Franklin County sinkhole,” the “Snake on the Lake” in Cleveland, and the Summit County split that gave a Republican in District 16 the chance to oust a Democratic incumbent. If the state can’t meet the June 14 deadline, or if the state produces another unconstitutional version, the three-judge panel said they likely would either appoint a special master to assist the court in drawing up a new plan or adopt the plan offered during the trial by redistricting expert William Cooper. Last year, Ohio voters - by a 3-to-1 margin - voted for a new redistricting procedure that will take effect after the 2020 Census. So what does our editorial board roundtable make of this situation? Ted Diadiun, editorial board member: Everyone knows what’s up here. Three federal judges – including two appointed by Democrats – are trying to put the fix in to produce more Democrats in Congress. The last thing we should do is follow Pennsylvania’s lead, where the Democrat-dominated Supreme Court rammed home a last-minute redistricting plan in 2018 that snatched away three GOP seats. Ohio voted to overhaul the state’s redistricting last year. That process should prevail. Thomas Suddes, editorial writer: Cartographically, procedurally, the GOP-run General Assembly could indeed meet a June 14 deadline -- if it wished to. But it almost certainly doesn’t. Advantage: lawyers and unelected federal judges. Eric Foster, editorial board member: To classify partisan gerrymandering as a political question outside the purview of the courts is to argue against the foundation of representative democracy. Voters are supposed to choose their representatives -- not the other way around. When representatives have locked voters into partisan districts, it’s cruel and nonsensical to tell them to go vote in order to fix the problem. This case is why we have a separation of powers. Mary Cay Doherty, editorial board member: The lawsuit should not have been filed or heard. Ohioans had already passed a constitutional amendment to correct the redistricting process. However, now that the District Court has declared our congressional map unconstitutional, Republicans must act. Elected officials uphold the Constitution and model fairness and honesty for their constituents. This is where the rubber meets the road. Hunker down. Sharpen the pencils. Redraw the map. Lisa Garvin, editorial board member: Ohio’s congressional district map is a crazy quilt of partisan gerrymandering, connecting like-minded voters by the thinnest of geographic threads. Can it be fixed by June 14? Probably not, but we need a new map for 2020. I’m more concerned by how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on this and similar appeals from two other states. If it finds gerrymandering to be constitutional, then Katy, bar the door. Victor Ruiz, editorial board member: This is one of many examples of voter suppression efforts by the Republican Party in this state. Those efforts have paid off in terms of holding onto their power, but, unfortunately, the citizens have lost, as seen in stagnant population, declining economic opportunities, low educational attainment, poor infrastructure, etc. A better balance of power will yield better outcomes for all Ohio citizens. Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, cleveland.com: A federal court has officially determined something many Ohioans already knew -- Ohio’s congressional map is unconstitutionally deficient and should not be used for another federal election. Ohio legislators who have sworn to uphold the law must redo the map forthwith. Have something to say about this topic? * Use the comments to share your thoughts. Then, stay informed when readers reply to your comments by using the “Follow” option at the top of the comments, and look for updates via the small blue bell in the lower right as you look at more stories on cleveland.com. * Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication. * Email general questions about our editorial board or comments on this editorial board roundtable to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com.<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON — A federal court said Friday that Ohio's congressional district map — drawn by the Republican-controlled state legislature — unconstitutionally discriminates against Democrats, and ordered the state to come up with a new plan for the 2020 election. "We are convinced by the evidence that this partisan gerrymander was intentional," said a unanimous three-judge panel, giving the state until June 14 to submit a new map. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters. The ruling said the current district plan "unconstitutionally burdens associational rights by making it more difficult for voters and certain organizations to advance their aims, be they pro-Democratic or pro-democracy." The court said the map, drawn for the 2012 election and used since, "dilutes the votes of Democratic voters by packing and cracking them into districts that are so skewed toward one party that the electoral outcome is predetermined." In each of the four elections under the 2012 plan, Republicans have won 12 of the state's 16 congressional districts, leaving the Democrats with the remaining four. Packing means drawing district boundaries so that minority voters are crowded into as few districts as possible and spreading out or "cracking" them among the remaining districts, where they can never achieve a majority to elect the candidates of their choice. "Today's ruling ensures that voters' voices will be restored," said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. Dave Yost, Ohio’s Republican attorney general, said the state will appeal Friday's decision and seek a stay in the meantime to prevent it from taking effect. He called the ruling "a fundamentally political act that has no basis whatsoever in the Constitution." In recent years, courts in other states have been willing to rule against single-party dominance by declaring that maps for congressional or state legislative districts are unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. Just last week, a federal court in Michigan said that state's Republican legislature must come up with a new plan for its congressional districts, declaring that the votes of Democrats were unconstitutionally diluted. But the Supreme Court has yet to establish a test for determining when the essentially partisan act of drawing political boundaries becomes too political. Confronted with similar challenges in the past, the justices concluded that it would be impossible for the courts to know when partisan gerrymandering crossed a constitutional line. In 2004, the court rejected a claim that a Pennsylvania gerrymander was too partisan, though Justice Anthony Kennedy indicated then that such a lawsuit might succeed if the right kind of proof came along. He has since left the court, replaced by the more conservative Brett Kavanaugh. Two cases are pending before the high court, challenging congressional redistricting plans that locked in an advantage for Republicans in North Carolina and gave an extra seat to Democrats in Maryland. Those decisions are expected by late June.