Opinion ID: 6501056
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Petitioners have satisfied their burden

Text: {¶ 56} Petitioners have satisfied their burden by showing beyond a reasonable doubt that the March 2 plan unduly favors the Republican Party in violation of Article XIX, Section 1(C)(3)(a) of the Ohio Constitution. Comparative analyses and other metrics show that the March 2 plan allocates voters in ways that unnecessarily favor the Republican Party by packing Democratic voters into a few dense Democratic-leaning districts, thereby increasing the Republican vote share of the remaining districts. As a result, districts that would otherwise be strongly Democratic-leaning are now competitive or Republican-leaning districts. In 7. The efficiency gap measures the difference between the parties’ respective “wasted votes” (i.e., the number of votes above the 50 percent plus 1 that a party needs to win an election), divided by the total number of votes cast. 22 January Term, 2022 addition, the March 2 plan carves districts around the state’s largest cities to combine Democratic voters in those areas with Republican voters in rural areas, thereby creating more Republican-leaning districts. {¶ 57} Senate President Huffman, House Speaker Cupp, Senator McColley, and Representative LaRe offer little in response to petitioners’ evidence. They start by questioning the idea that experts can assist the court in determining whether a plan complies with the standards set forth in Article XIX, Section 1(C)(3)(a). They argue that if the commission were “required to measure the constitutionality of its plans using a specific mathematical test or compactness score, it would have been included in [Article XIX].” But, as we have already concluded, expert analysis is probative of whether a plan unduly favors or disfavors a political party in violation of Section 1(C)(3)(a). See Adams, __ Ohio St.3d __, 2022-Ohio-89, __ N.E.3d __, at ¶ 42-66. And expert analysis is a tool equally as available to respondents as it is to petitioners. There is no rationale to support disregarding the expert analysis submitted by petitioners. {¶ 58} Senate President Huffman, House Speaker Cupp, Senator McColley, and Representative LaRe nevertheless argue that even if we consider petitioners’ evidence, it is “conflicting and contradictory.” They give two examples. First, they argue that all of Dr. Imai’s simulated plans included eight or nine Republicanleaning districts while most of Dr. Chen’s simulated plans included ten Republicanleaning districts. Second, they criticize the example plan that Dr. Imai submitted to the commission because it included nine Republican-leaning districts, even though most (80 percent) of his simulated plans included only eight Republicanleaning districts. The fact that the experts have identified a range of probable Republican-leaning seats (rather than a definitive number), they say, shows that the experts’ “ ‘math’ is unreliable.” These criticisms are unfounded. Even though Dr. Imai and Dr. Chen predict different seat allocations depending on the methods of 23 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO analysis and data sets used, their analysis remains probative of whether the March 2 plan unduly favors or disfavors a political party. {¶ 59} Senate President Huffman, House Speaker Cupp, Senator McColley, and Representative LaRe also assert that Dr. Imai has put his “thumb on the scale” and “gam[ed] the math” by using data from six statewide federal elections from 2012 to 2020 (referred to in Adams as the “FEDEA dataset”) to predict that Republicans should expect to win eight, or maybe nine, seats. See Adams at ¶ 19, 48-49. They cite to the analysis of their own expert, Sean P. Trende, who is the senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics, a company that produces a political website, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute focusing on American politics. His analysis shows that when different data sets are applied to Dr. Imai’s simulation program, more than eight or nine Republican seats can be expected. Trende’s analysis, however, does not undermine the reliability of Dr. Imai’s projections. Dr. Imai explained that he used the FEDEA dataset because that was the data set the General Assembly had used in assessing the plan it passed. Senate President Huffman, House Speaker Cupp, Senator McColley, and Representative LaRe have not shown and cannot show that Dr. Imai’s analysis has been manipulated to derive a particular result favorable to petitioners’ cases. {¶ 60} As a final matter, Senate President Huffman, House Speaker Cupp, Senator McColley, and Representative LaRe claim that we should not rely on petitioners’ evidence, because there has not been time for full discovery, particularly the cross-examination of petitioners’ experts. This argument, too, is not based on sound reasoning. The scheduling order in these cases required the parties to file evidence within 25 days of this court’s entry. 166 Ohio St.3d 1452, 2022-Ohio-1016, 184 N.E.3d 138. Depositions of petitioners’ experts could have been taken during that time. 24 January Term, 2022 D. Article XIX, Section 1(C)(3)(b) {¶ 61} Article XIX, Section 1(C)(3)(b) of the Ohio Constitution provides that when the General Assembly passes a congressional-district plan by a simple majority, it “shall not unduly split governmental units, giving preference to keeping whole, in the order named, counties, then townships and municipal corporations.” In Adams, we explained that “the splitting of a governmental unit may be ‘undue’ if it is excessive or unwarranted.” __ Ohio St.3d __, 2022-Ohio-89, __ N.E.3d __, ¶ 83. We held that the original congressional-district plan unduly split Hamilton, Cuyahoga, and Summit Counties. Id. at ¶ 5, 77. The evidence showed that the original plan did not need to split Hamilton and Cuyahoga Counties twice and that it did not need to split Summit County at all. Id. at ¶ 84-93. The original plan’s excessive splitting of these counties resulted in noncompact districts that could not be explained by neutral redistricting criteria and served no purpose other than to confer a significant partisan advantage on the political party that drew the districts. Id. at ¶ 77, 88, 93. Petitioners argue that the March 2 plan, too, unduly splits counties in violation of Section 1(C)(3)(b). {¶ 62} As an initial matter, we reject the League petitioners’ argument that District 15 violates Section 1(C)(3)(b) because it splits five counties. Section 1(C)(3)(b) prohibits the excessive or unwarranted splitting of individual governmental units, see Adams at ¶ 83; it does not limit the number of partial governmental units a single district may include. The League petitioners do not argue that the splitting of any of the individual counties in District 15 was unwarranted. Rather, they argue that the partial governmental units should not be part of District 15. {¶ 63} Petitioners fail to develop any other arguments supporting their claim that the March 2 plan violates Section 1(C)(3)(b). They focus on the fact that Districts 1 and 15 pair urban areas with rural areas and that those districts have relatively poor compactness scores. In Adams, we recognized that the pairing of 25 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO urban and rural areas and poor compactness scores could be problematic consequences of unduly splitting certain counties. See id. at ¶ 77, 84-93. But under Section 1(C)(3)(b), petitioners must show, as a threshold matter, that the splitting itself—i.e., not just the effects of the splits—is “excessive or unwarranted.” Adams at ¶ 83. Without that threshold showing, petitioners are merely repeating their claim that the plan unduly favors or disfavors a political party in violation of Section 1(C)(3)(a). {¶ 64} The Adams petitioners showed that the original plan split Hamilton, Cuyahoga, and Summit Counties an excessive number of times. See id., __ Ohio St.3d __, 2022-Ohio-89, __ N.E.3d __, at ¶ 87 (crediting evidence that “splitting Hamilton County into three districts is ‘statistically anomalous’ ”); ¶ 90 (noting that Summit County need not be split at all); ¶ 91 (noting that only 8 of Dr. Imai’s 5,000 simulated plans split Cuyahoga County twice). Petitioners in these cases again challenge the splitting of Hamilton County, but unlike the original plan, the March 2 plan splits Hamilton County only once (as it must, due to population requirements).8 Unlike in Adams, petitioners have not identified evidence showing that the splitting of the counties in District 1 or 15 is inherently excessive or unwarranted. Petitioners’ arguments address only the manner in which the March 2 plan splits certain counties. That concern (presented alone, as petitioners have done) relates only to whether the plan unduly favors or disfavors a political party under Section 1(C)(3)(a).