A federal three-judge panel still waiting on an Ohio legislative redistricting plan said Tuesday it won’t jump into congressional redistricting right now either.
The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
The voters, represented by attorney Percy Squire, wanted the most recent congressional maps to be removed, arguing GOP mapmakers did not include racial data when drawing district lines, thus discriminating against marginalized Ohioans. Their arguments were added by the judges to another lawsuit filed by GOP voters. That lawsuit specifically addressed legislative districts, and asked that a legislative map rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court be used in the May 3 primary.
The federal judges said claims to change congressional redistricting plans “would not have passed this court’s intervention analysis” in the first place, despite the fact that both plans came through the Ohio Redistricting Commission.