Ohio will reuse congressional map for 2024 elections after legal challenge dismissed

The Ohio Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge to the state's congressional map that had previously been ruled unconstitutional, clearing the way for it to be used in 2024.

Opponents of the 2022 congressional map dropped a legal challenge this week, and on Thursday, the Ohio Supreme Court officially dismissed the case. The map's opponents worried they could end up with a worse map if Republican mapmakers or the Ohio Supreme Court under new GOP leadership had their way.

Attorney Freda Levenson with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio wrote that using the 2022 map again gives Ohio voters some "much-needed certainty." Candidates must file to run by December and the primary is in March.

And Republicans don't plan to redraw the congressional map.

"Following months of rancor from far-left special interests, those same organizations decided it was no longer in their best interest to litigate after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the earlier 4-3 opinion under Ohio's former chief justice," Senate Republican spokesman John Fortney said. Going forward, Fortney urged Democrats to "reject orders" from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's organization and "give the process approved by the voters a chance to work."

In 2022, 10 Republicans and five Democrats won seats in Congress representing Ohio. Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman flipped a seat from Republican incumbent Steve Chabot in a district that included the entirety of Cincinnati.

The Ohio Supreme Court under then-Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor ruled that the congressional map was unconstitutional because it was drawn to favor Republican candidates over Democratic ones. The 1st congressional district, which stretched from Cincinnati to Warren County, and the 15th congressional district, which extended from Columbus nearly to the Indiana border, were not compact and unnecessarily split communities, the majority ruled in a 4-3 decision last year.

But Sharon Kennedy, who won the chief justice job in November 2022, would have approved the map as constitutional. She and two other Republican justices dissented from the decisions striking down map after map in 2022.

Opponents of the 2022 map − including the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Holder's organization − considered that new leadership in their decision to dismiss their legal challenge.

The case was back in the hands of Ohio Supreme Court justices after the U.S. Supreme Court had vacated the prior ruling that the map was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court directed the Ohio judges to take another look at the case in light of a North Carolina redistricting decision.

Ohio lawmakers would still need to draw a new congressional map for the 2026 elections because the current version was approved by Republicans without Democratic buy-in. And the seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission is still tasked with redrawing Ohio House and Senate maps for the 2024 elections.

Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Akron Beacon Journal, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Supreme Court dismisses legal challenge to congressional map