Michigan was last week….
Other attempts blocked are sitting before the Supreme’s for Maryland and North Carolina …
Federal judges in Ohio have thrown out the state’s Republican-drawn congressional map — the latest lower court to rule that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional while awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on the issue.
A three-judge panel for the Southern District of Ohio in Cincinnati ruled that the map passed by Ohio’s GOP legislators and approved by then-Gov. John Kasich violated voters’ 1st and 14th amendment rights, writing that “partisan discrimination against Democratic voters was the predominant intent in the creation of each congressional district” and of the map as a whole.
“We join the other federal that have held partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional and developed substantially similar standards for adjudicating such claims,” wrote the judges. “We are convinced by the evidence that this partisan gerrymander was intentional and effective and that no legitimate justification accounts for its extremity.”
The ruling comes a week after a three-judge panel in neighboring Michigan ruled that state’s congressional districts — also drawn by Republicans after the 2010 census — were also unconstitutionally gerrymandered….