Parties face off in court over legislative maps

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Jus­tices asked tough ques­tions of both sides Tues­day as they weighed a case that seeks to scrap Ohio’s newly drawn leg­isla­tive map on the premise it was ger­ry­man­dered to favor Republicans.

Lawyers spar­ring before the Ohio Supreme Court dis­agreed over the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the new lines and the process by which they were drawn. The court must now make a rul­ing in the case, though it has said its deci­sion will be timed not to impact the 2012 pres­i­den­tial race.

Kevin Hamil­ton, rep­re­sent­ing Democ­rats who brought the chal­lenge on behalf of a group of vot­ers, said the five-member panel charged with draw­ing the new map inten­tion­ally sought polit­i­cal advan­tage as pro­hib­ited in the Con­sti­tu­tion. That panel, the state Appor­tion­ment Board, is pop­u­lated with four Repub­li­cans and one Democrat.

“The record is rife with evi­dence that the board took into account polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, adding por­tion of coun­ties that didn’t need to be split, for the pur­pose of assist­ing or increas­ing par­ti­san advan­tage,” Hamil­ton told the court dur­ing oral arguments.

E. Mark Braden, an attor­ney for the board’s Repub­li­can major­ity, said the state Con­sti­tu­tion only asks that the board con­sider min­i­miz­ing county, town­ship, city and precinct splits — but it doesn’t con­tain an absolute rule as in some other states, such as Pennsylvania.

“Absolutely one has to look at keep­ing coun­ties whole, but it’s only part of a mosaic of other pro­vi­sions that one has to look at,” he told the court.

The lit­i­ga­tion says the maps of 99 House and 33 Sen­ate dis­tricts split cities, coun­ties and other com­mu­nity units more than 250 times, seek­ing polit­i­cal advan­tage for GOP can­di­dates. Hamil­ton said more neu­tral maps were pro­duced that split only 30, rather than 50 counties.

Jus­tice Judith Lanzinger ques­tioned Hamilton’s posi­tion that Ohio’s Con­sti­tu­tion was firmly against split­ting communities.

Jus­tice Paul Pfeifer asked whether the Con­sti­tu­tion specif­i­cally pro­hibits maps that advan­tage one party over the other.

“There’s a fair amount of evi­dence, and it’s no sur­prise, that Appor­tion­ment Board con­sul­tants attempted to draw the map in a fash­ion that would advan­tage their polit­i­cal party. There’s no ref­er­ence, or no pro­hi­bi­tion or guid­ance, in the Con­sti­tu­tion that pro­hibits that effort? Or is there?”

Hamil­ton said “the very struc­ture of the Con­sti­tu­tion” stands against ger­ry­man­der­ing. Braden said the duty to min­i­mize juris­dic­tional splits “is not in Ohio law.”

“The actions of the Appor­tion­ment Board, both its process and its plan, are totally con­sis­tent with 40 years of prece­dent,” he said, argu­ing “there’s not one line in their briefs that shows any inconsistency.”

Pfeifer retorted: “Is that your argu­ment? They ignored the man­date of the Con­sti­tu­tion before, so it’s OK to ignore it now?”

No, said Braden, but “there’s an impor­tant his­tor­i­cal prece­dent that the court needs to consider.”

The Democ­rats’ com­plaint also alleges vio­la­tions of the state open-meetings law occurred dur­ing their cre­ation. Court fil­ings include accounts of major­ity Repub­li­cans who con­trolled the process con­duct­ing map-making work in a secret hotel room near the State­house but out of view of the public.

Jus­tice Ter­rence O’Donnell ques­tioned why the suit named only the Appor­tion­ment Board’s four Repub­li­can mem­bers — Gov. John Kasich, Audi­tor David Yost, Sec­re­tary of State Jon Husted and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tom Niehaus — but not Demo­c­ra­tic mem­ber Armond Bud­ish, the Ohio House minor­ity leader.

He said no pre­vi­ous chal­lenge to a leg­isla­tive map omit­ted a mem­ber of the board. Hamil­ton said Bud­ish objected to the plan so was not listed.

The Appor­tion­ment Board voted 4–1 along party lines in the fall to accept the new map. It was filed with Husted’s office in Sep­tem­ber and is intended to be in place through 2021.

Ohio redraws leg­isla­tive dis­tricts every 10 years to reflect pop­u­la­tion shifts iden­ti­fied in the U.S. census.

Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats were given sim­i­lar sums of tax­payer money to cover sup­plies, soft­ware, office space and con­sult­ing in what’s called the appor­tion­ment process. In a sep­a­rate pro­ceed­ing, Repub­li­cans have ques­tioned the pro­pri­ety of how Democ­rats spent some of their money.

The seven-member Supreme Court is made up of six Repub­li­cans and one Democrat.

Posted by AP News on Apr 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.