Ohio Congressional Map Is Illegal Gerrymander, Federal Court Rules

A federal court on Friday tossed out Ohio’s congressional map, ruling that Republican state lawmakers had carved up the state to give themselves an illegal partisan advantage and to dilute Democrats’ votes in a way that predetermined the outcome of elections.

The ruling, by a three-judge panel from the Federal District Court in Cincinnati, ordered new maps to be drawn by June 14 to be used for the 2020 election, when Democrats will fight to preserve their House majority. The ruling will go directly to the United States Supreme Court for review.

The ruling follows decisions by four other federal courts striking down partisan gerrymanders in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maryland and, last week, in Michigan. All but Maryland were gerrymandered by Republicans.

The Supreme Court, which last year sidestepped the issue of whether partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution, is expected to rule this spring in appeals from Maryland and North Carolina.

The rulings in those cases could determine whether the Supreme Court upholds this decision, alters it or nullifies it entirely.

Ohio’s maps, in effect since 2012, have solidified a congressional delegation that has remained unchanged in four elections, yielding 12 Republicans and four Democrats — or 75 percent for one party in a swing state that has trended Republican in recent years, but where presidential and statewide elections are often close.

In their sharply worded, unanimous opinion, the judges wrote that Republicans in Ohio, supervised by party mapmaking experts in Washington, operated with “invidious partisan intent” to pack Democrats into as few districts as possible, and to carve up Democratic-leaning cities and counties to favor Republicans.

Hamilton County and the city of Cincinnati, for example, were split in a “strange, squiggly, curving shape” to divide Democrats, the judges wrote. Meanwhile in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, Democrats were concentrated in a “sinkhole” that allowed mapmakers to “secure healthy Republican majorities” in two suburban districts.

“In this case,” the judges wrote, “the bottom line is that the dominant party in state government manipulated district lines in an attempt to control electoral outcomes and thus direct the political ideology of the state’s congressional delegation.’’

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.

In the Ohio case, the judges applied three tests to assess the House map’s constitutionality: whether its drafters intended to hobble their opponents, whether they succeeded and whether there was any other reason the districts could have been drawn as they were. They concluded that the map failed all three tests.

Federal judges relied on the same three tests in ruling maps unconstitutional in North Carolina, Maryland and Wisconsin, a fact opponents of gerrymanders called significant.

“The Supreme Court’s problem in the past has been that it couldn’t find a standard for managing these cases,” said Ruth Greenwood, the co-director of voting rights and redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center, a legal advocacy group. “Well, here is one that’s working and is manageable.”

Last year, Ohio voters resoundingly approved a ballot initiative that will blunt the partisan influence on redistricting starting in 2021 after the next census. The measure encourages compromise: New congressional maps must pass the state House and Senate with at least 50 percent approval from the minority party. If they fail, a seven-member commission, made up of the governor, two other state officials and two Democratic and two Republican lawmakers, draws the maps.

State Senate President Larry Obhof, a defendant in the lawsuit, said Republicans would prevail at the Supreme Court. “Make no mistake, this politically-motivated lawsuit was brought for the sole purpose of helping Democrat candidates win more seats,’’ he said in a statement. “It does so at the expense of Ohio’s voters, who would be forced to vote under three different congressional maps in four calendar years. That is bad public policy and is unfair to the people of Ohio.”