COLUMBUS — A new lawsuit challenges Ohio’s newly drawn state legislative districts as giving an extreme and unfair advantage to the Republican Party.
The litigation filed Thursday is believed to be the first in the nation against district maps drawn under the 2020 census.
It is also the first one drawn since Ohio voters approved changes to the state’s redistricting process in 2015.
An ACLU-led legal team filed the suit in the Ohio Supreme Court on behalf of voters and voter-rights groups, including the League of Women Voters of Ohio AND the Ohio Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
“This is a brazen abuse of power by the political party that is in control. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse,” senior staff attorney Alora Thomas-Lundborg of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project said.
The lawsuit targets a map the new Republican-dominated Ohio Redistricting Commission passed in a 5-2 party-line vote last week.
The map is predicted to continue to deliver supermajorities to the GOP and was met with harsh criticism from Democrats.
“Republican members of the Commission decided the will of the people was not important to them and instead passed a partisan four-year map. Now the issue is in the hands of the courts,” commission member Ohio House Minority Leader Emilia Strong Sykes (D-Akron) said.
The 5-2 partisan vote meant the map would last only four years, rather than 10.