Cleveland Plain Dealer: Ohio Supreme Court again rejects Republicans’ state legislative maps

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court once again has struck down new state legislative maps as unconstitutionally slanted toward Republicans under Ohio’s new anti-gerrymandering rules.

In a ruling Monday evening, the court gave the Ohio Redistricting Commission until Feb. 17 to draw new Ohio House and Senate maps. Once again, retiring Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor joined the court’s three Democrats in rejecting the latest set of maps, approved by redistricting commission Republicans on Jan. 22.

The same justices made a similar determination about the last set of maps on Jan. 12, ordering the redistricting commission to submit a new map within 10 days that had more Democratic-leaning districts. Both rulings cite new state constitutional language, overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2015, that say maps should favor parties to win districts in proportion to their share of the statewide vote — 54% for Republicans and 46% for Democrats.

The latest rejected map favored Republicans to win 57 of 99 House districts and 20 of 33 Senate districts, or 58% of overall seats, compared with around 65% in the maps the court rejected last month. But a significant number of Democratic-leaning districts in the newer map were tightly competitive, while only a few Republican-leaning districts were only somewhat competitive.

In Monday’s ruling, the majority of justices faulted Gov. Mike DeWine and other Republicans on the redistricting commission for using an old map as the template for the new one. In doing so, Republicans added additional but just slightly Democratic-leaning districts in response to the court’s previous order while not adding a proportionate number of competitive Republican-leaning districts. In doing so, Republicans violated a constitutional rule that says maps shouldn’t benefit either party, the majority said. …

Catherine Turcer, director of Common Cause Ohio and a longtime anti-gerrymandering advocate, praised the ruling.

“Today’s ruling is clear: gerrymandered maps have no place in the state of Ohio,” Turcer said in a statement. “Now that the Ohio Redistricting Commission is back to square one, we ask that they finally stop and listen to the voters’ demands for a fair redistricting process.”