COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) — The Ohio Supreme Court declared the latest legislative district maps unconstitutional, ruling that the maps do not meet provisions in the Ohio Constitution meant to reduce gerrymandering.
In a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court determined that the maps must be redrawn because the Ohio Redistricting Commission did not draw the maps to correlate with statewide voter preferences.
Justice Melody J. Stewart wrote the majority opinion for the court, stating, "All parties agreed that in statewide partisan elections over the past decade, Republican candidates had won 54 percent of the vote share and Democratic candidates had won 46 percent of the vote share."
A plan proposed by Democrats proposed a plan mirrored these percentages, with 44 of the 99 seats in the House seats leaning Democrat, with 55 of the the 99 seats leaning Republican.
However, Stewart noted, "The Republican proposed plan — which the commission adopted as its proposed plan — predicted 32 Democratic leaning House seats and 67 Republican leaning House seats." The Ohio Senate map predicted 23 Republican leaning seats to 10 for the Democrats.
Because of this disparity, The Supreme Court concluded that the redrawn maps did not meet the proportionality requirements set forth in Article XI, Section 6(B) of the Ohio Constitution.
Republican legislative leaders claimed the new provisions were meant to be aspirational, hanging their hats on the wording of the amendment which says the commission “shall attempt to draw the General Assembly district plan that meets all these standards."
The Court also ruled that the commission violated Section 6(A) of Artice XI, which states that "No general assembly district plan shall be drawn primarily to favor or disfavor a political party."
In the opinion, Justice Stewart voiced the court's disagreement with the plan. "When drawing a district plan, the commission must attempt to meet the standards set forth in Section 6."
Six years ago, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved the amendment to the state’s Constitution to end partisan redistricting, in response to secretive gerrymandering that had gone on for years. The purpose of the amendment, according to the 2015 ballot language presented to voters, was to “end the partisan process for drawing Ohio House and Senate districts, and replace it with a bipartisan process with the goal of having district boundaries that are more compact and politically competitive.”
Article XI states that districts should be drawn as compactly as possible, with the splitting of political subdivisions such as cities and counties to be done as little as possible in an attempt to create even populations. In the opinion, Justice Stewart noted that under Section 6 of the amendment, the commission is charged with examining both federal and state election results over the past 10 years in order to determine how the proposed districts are likely to vote in the future.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission's five Republican members who voted to adopt the maps in question claimed that these preferences can be determined using the percentage of winning candidates in statewide elections. This meant that, because GOP candidates won 13 of 16, or 81%, of the statewide elections in the last decade, the adopted maps met the constitutional requirements because the districts' voting preferences, determined to be about 68%, fell between 54% and 81% of the statewide voting preferences.





