Supreme Court lets Ohio legislative map stand

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Supreme Court let stand a newly drawn state leg­isla­tive map Tues­day in a defeat for Democrats.

In a 4–3 rul­ing, the divided high court upheld the map approved last year on grounds that Ohio’s Con­sti­tu­tion does not require polit­i­cal neu­tral­ity in the process.

Democ­rats, who brought the chal­lenge on behalf of a group of vot­ers, had argued the five-member Ohio Appor­tion­ment Board inten­tion­ally sought polit­i­cal advan­tage with the maps as pro­hib­ited in the con­sti­tu­tion, in a maneu­ver known as gerrymandering.

Repub­li­cans in the case argued the state con­sti­tu­tion asks the map-drawing board to con­sider min­i­miz­ing county, town­ship, city and precinct splits but sets no absolute rule.

The court ruled that oppo­nents of the maps didn’t present con­vinc­ing evi­dence the Republican-controlled appor­tion­ment board manip­u­lated the dis­tricts for GOP polit­i­cal gain.

“The role of a supreme court in con­sid­er­ing con­sti­tu­tional chal­lenges to an appor­tion­ment plan is restricted to deter­min­ing whether rela­tors have met their bur­den to prove that the plan adopted by the board is uncon­sti­tu­tional beyond a rea­son­able doubt,” Jus­tice Ter­rence O’Donnell wrote for the majority.

In his dis­sent, Jus­tice Paul Pfeifer said the Con­sti­tu­tion does not set the strin­gent proof stan­dard per­ceived by the majority.

“In order to jus­tify its find­ing of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity, the major­ity opin­ion expresses two con­clu­sions of ques­tion­able legit­i­macy; these anchors of the major­ity opin­ion fail the tests of logic and fair­ness,” he wrote. “First the major­ity opin­ion erects a nearly insur­mount­able bar­rier to a suc­cess­ful con­sti­tu­tional chal­lenge by assign­ing to the board’s actions a blan­ket pre­sump­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity and requir­ing proof beyond a rea­son­able doubt to estab­lish that the plan fails to meet all con­sti­tu­tional requirements.

Pfeifer went on, “Proof beyond a rea­son­able doubt is typ­i­cally nec­es­sary only in crim­i­nal cases. Such a high bur­den of proof in the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tional mat­ter turns this court into a rub­ber stamp, not the guardian of the con­sti­tu­tion that it is designed to be.”

O’Donnell was joined in the major­ity by jus­tices Judith Ann Lanzinger, Robert Cupp and John Willam­owski, sit­ting in for Eve­lyn Lund­berg Strat­ton, who had recused her­self for unstated reasons.

Pfiefer, Chief Jus­tice Mau­reen O’Connor, and Jus­tice Yvette McGee Brown, the court’s only Demo­c­rat, dis­sented. O’Connor signed both Pfeifer’s and McGee Brown’s dis­sent­ing opinions.

Besides the proof bur­den, the major­ity cited lim­its in the court’s abil­ity to judge leg­isla­tive maps.

“This court does not sit as a super appor­tion­ment board to deter­mine whether a plan pre­sented by the rela­tors is bet­ter than the plan adopted by the board,” O’Donnell wrote. “Instead, we deter­mine whether the board acted within the broad dis­cre­tion con­ferred upon it by the pro­vi­sions of (the Con­sti­tu­tion) when it adopted its plan.”

Ohio, like other states, redraws its con­gres­sional and leg­isla­tive maps once every decade to reflect pop­u­la­tion shift records in the U.S. Census.

The lit­i­ga­tion says the lat­est state leg­isla­tive map of 99 House and 33 Sen­ate dis­tricts split cities, coun­ties and other com­mu­nity units more than 250 times. Democ­rats said a more neu­tral map was pos­si­ble that split only 30, rather than 50, of Ohio’s 88 counties.

The Appor­tion­ment Board was made up of the gov­er­nor, sec­re­tary of state, state audi­tor, Sen­ate pres­i­dent and House minor­ity party. In 2011, four of five of those were Repub­li­cans. The panel voted 4–1 along party lines in Sep­tem­ber 2011 on the map chal­lenged in the law­suit. Dur­ing 2012 elec­tions run using the new dis­trict bound­aries, the GOP retained majori­ties in both leg­isla­tive chambers.

The court had delayed its rul­ing to keep from affect­ing the 2012 elec­tion — allow­ing the dis­puted map to remain in place for leg­isla­tive races this fall.

Vot­ers First, a coali­tion of voter advo­cacy groups that advanced an unsuc­cess­ful 2012 bal­lot pro­posal to over­haul Ohio’s map-making process, found in a post-election analy­sis that 97 of 99 Ohio House dis­tricts went to the party favored by new dis­trict lines. They pointed to the review as proof that map mak­ers, not vot­ers, con­trol Ohio elections.

House Demo­c­ra­tic Leader Armond Bud­ish, who served on the appor­tion­ment board and was not sued, crit­i­cized Tuesday’s deci­sion for legal­iz­ing a sys­tem of polit­i­cal self-interest.

“This does not serve the broad inter­est of Ohio vot­ers,” Bud­ish said. “Instead, it per­pet­u­ates a bro­ken polit­i­cal sys­tem which will con­tinue to favor extrem­ism, not respon­si­ble governing.”

Bud­ish said the rul­ing sig­nals an urgent need to reform Ohio’s redis­trict­ing process — a state­ment where he and Repub­li­can House Speaker William Batchelder appeared in agreement.

Batchelder praised the rul­ing as “a recog­ni­tion that the sys­tem works,” but left open the ques­tion of whether Ohio’s way of draw­ing lines could be amended.

“I absolutely think we should look into it,” he told reporters after a House ses­sion Tues­day. “I don’t think there’s any ques­tion about that.”

Batchelder said he wants the Ohio Con­sti­tu­tional Mod­ern­iza­tion Com­mis­sion, a bipar­ti­san panel charged with review­ing Ohio’s con­sti­tu­tion, to hear tes­ti­mony on how the state draws its polit­i­cal boundaries.

Posted by AP News on Nov 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.