09/24/2021

Voting Rights Groups Sue Ohio over Redistricting Map

It's the first to challenge a statewide redistricting map drawn using 2020 census results

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other voter rights groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the newly drawn state legislative districts enacted last week by a Republican-dominated commission in Ohio, an opening salvo in what is likely to be a series of confrontations across the country as the once-in-a-decade redistricting process unfolds.

In a suit filed in the Ohio Supreme Court, the rights groups accuse the Ohio Redistricting Commission of engaging in “extreme partisan gerrymandering” that violates the state’s constitution in formalizing the redrawn districts, which the suit says “are intended to, and will, entrench a Republican veto-proof supermajority in both chambers of Ohio’s General Assembly for the next four years.”

Alora Thomas-Lundborg, a senior staff attorney with the A.C.L.U.’s Voting Rights Project, said that the suit was the first to challenge a statewide redistricting map drawn using the results of the 2020 census. "Ohio may be the canary in the coal mine from what we can expect from a partisan-dominated map-drawing process," she said.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The New York Times.