Ohio Republicans want to gerrymander the state. One GOP judge stands in their way

Hello, and happy Thursday,

Over the last few months, an extraordinary standoff has been taking place in Ohio. And at the center of this dispute is Maureen O’Connor, the Republican chief justice of the Ohio supreme court.

Republicans have tried four separate times to draw new state legislative districts. The state supreme court, where Republicans have a 4-3 majority, has blocked them three times (a fourth challenge is pending). The basis for all those rulings has been that the proposed districts are so skewed in favor of Republicans that they violate the Ohio constitution. The impasse is so severe that Ohio voters began voting in the state’s primary elections this month without legislative races on the ballot.

In every ruling, O’Connor, who was Ohio’s lieutenant governor before being elected to the supreme court in 2002, has been the decisive swing vote, siding with her three Democratic colleagues. She has emerged as the last thread preventing her party from gerrymandering. That has infuriated some Republicans, who have called for O’Connor to be impeached, even though she is due to leave the bench at the end of this year because she has reached the mandatory retirement age, 70, for judges in Ohio.

I profiled O’Connor earlier this week. No one I spoke with seemed especially surprised that she was bucking her party. In her 24-year political career, she has objected to the closure of abortion clinics, backed bail reform and aggressively called out her own party for criticizing judges. A decade ago, she dissented when the supreme court upheld Republican districts.

“She’s no shrinking violet. She’s got sharp elbows,” Paul Pfeifer, a Republican who served on the supreme court with O’Connor for more than a decade, told me. “No amount of public criticism is going to change her mind if she feels that she’s right in the position she’s taking.”

The refusal from O’Connor and the other three justices on the court is deeply consequential. In 2015, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved adding language to the state constitution that says state legislative districts can’t be drawn “primarily to favor or disfavor a political party”. The makeup of the legislature, the addition said, should reflect the results of statewide elections in Ohio over the last 10 years – a 54-46 split in favor of Republicans.

Republicans have blatantly ignored that. All the plans Republicans have proposed would enable the party to win at least 60% of the seats in the legislature – a veto-proof majority in Ohio. By refusing to accept those plans, O’Connor and the court are signaling that they are going to aggressively enforce the new language in the constitution.

Politicians who gerrymander usually face no consequences. In a worst-case scenario, a judge will strike down their district lines, often after a few elections have taken place under them. But in Ohio, those who have challenged the maps want to ensure that future politicians don’t try similar shenanigans. They have twice asked the Ohio supreme court to punish – through fines or any other means – the members of the seven-person panel for ignoring the supreme court’s instructions to come up with a constitutional map. Such a finding would send an unprecedented warning to politicians about the consequences of gerrymandering.

“This has gone from a battle over democracy in Ohio to a battle over democracy and the rule of law in Ohio,” David Pepper, a former chair of the Ohio Democratic party, told me. “No other citizens who violate the law four times get rewarded for it.”

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