As expected, a lawsuit has been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Ohio against the state’s Redistricting Commission over new four-year state House and Senate district maps. Those maps were approved on a party line vote last week, and Republicans admit they were drawn to preserve GOP supermajorities in both chambers.
The lawsuit says the map will lock in two-thirds of the House and nearly 70% of Senate districts for Republicans for the next four years. And it says the Republicans’ “brazen manipulation of district lines” disregards the party split of Ohio voters in the last decade of elections and defies the 2015 constitutional amendment that sought to end extreme partisan gerrymandering. ACLU attorney Freda Levenson says the goal isn’t maps gerrymandered for Democrats, but they will likely win more seats if the lawsuit is successful.
“But that would be to achieve fairness, not to achieve and unfair advantage. It would be to undo an unfair advantage that was obtained the people drawing the map drew the map to favor themselves.”
A decision from the Ohio Supreme Court would have to happen before January so the maps could be redrawn before the candidate filing deadline in February.
