Statehouse maps cleared for 2024 use after Ohio Supreme Court dismisses lawsuits

Republicans on the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed legal challenges to state House and Senate maps Monday, allowing the plan to take effect through 2030.

The court's four Republican justices, led by Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, ruled that the landscape had changed because Republicans and Democrats unanimously approved the latest House and Senate maps in September. They sided with GOP lawmakers who requested that the cases be dismissed.

The latest maps give Republicans an advantage in at least 62% of House seats and 70% of Senate districts, but redistricting reform advocates say the numbers could be even higher. The plan does not match the statewide voting preferences of Ohioans, about 54% of whom picked GOP candidates and 45% picked Democratic ones between 2012 and 2020. But mapmakers say the plan doesn't have to if it meets other technical requirements and Democrats sign off on it.

Ultimately, that bipartisan support changed the calculus for the majority of the Ohio Supreme Court.

"In contrast to those (earlier) plans, the September 2023 plan was adopted with bipartisan support and without resort to the impasse procedures set forth in ... the Ohio Constitution," according to the court's option. "The bipartisan support for the September 2023 plan means that it is effective for the 2024-through-2030 election cycles."

The court's Republicans did not weigh in on whether the issue raised about the new bipartisan plan had any merit. Opponents of the maps could file a new lawsuit, but the deadline for candidates to file paperwork to run in the March primaries in these races is Dec. 20.

Three Democratic justices on the Ohio Supreme Court disagreed with the decision to dismiss the legal challenges.

"When the fairness of legislative-district maps is in contention, the last thing we should do is to essentially bless a unanimous deal between the state’s major political parties and permit it to go constitutionally unchecked," wrote Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner in a dissent joined by two fellow Democratic justices.

Brunner wrote that: "the majority’s decision also hazards engendering a corresponding disappointment by citizens in our branch of government — the judiciary — furthering malaise, mistrust, and the perception that nothing changes in state government, except for the worse. Today’s order permits the commission to continue to deny Ohioans their constitutional right to fair voting districts."

The Ohio Supreme Court is under new leadership since it repeatedly rejected GOP-drawn maps for violating anti-gerrymandering rules in the state Constitution. Kennedy replaced former Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, also a Republican, who was the swing vote in several 2022 rulings that rejected Ohio's maps.

Ohio voters could face ballot issue in 2024

Meanwhile, a group called Citizens Not Politicians is hoping to replace the Ohio Redistricting Commission and lawmakers with a 15-member citizen commission, which would draw the statehouse and congressional maps instead. The group is hoping to make the November 2024 ballot.

Jen Miller, executive director of the Ohio League of Women Voters, said Citizens Not Politicians will be collecting signatures later this week.

"It is time to ban politicians and lobbyists from rigging maps for their own short-sighted interests, and instead to install an independent redistricting commission that assures that every Ohio has fair representation in Congress and the Ohio Statehouse," she said.

Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Supreme Court dismisses legal challenges to statehouse maps