The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled the Congressional map approved by state lawmakers in November is unduly biased toward Republicans and that it is “incomprehensibly more extremely biased than the 2011 plan that it replaced.”
The 4-3 ruling says the Congressional map did not reflect the will of voters who wanted to end partisan gerrymandering by unduly favored Republicans. Ohio League of Women Voters President Jen Miller says it’s a victory for voters.
"I commend the high court for being very clear on what their expectations are and how they are going to measure whether the map created is fair or not. That’s real teeth that we need," Miller says.
ACLU of Ohio Freda Levenson also praises the ruling saying it "proclaims that ‘gerrymandering is the antithetical perversion of representative democracy,’ and enforces the mandate put forward by Ohio voters in 2018 who demanded an end to this abuse of power.”
The court is giving the General Assembly specific instructions on what to fix, including a split in Hamilton and Cuyahoga County. And the court is giving lawmakers 30 days to fix the plan.
Earlier this week, the court also ruled Ohio's proposed legislative maps invalid and gave lawmakers 10 days to fix those.
You can read the entire ruling here
This story will contain updates as they become available.
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