Ohio GOP’S lawyers defend districting
Attorneys with the North Carolina law firm hired by the top two Ohio GOP lawmakers to defend newly redrawn legislative districts have said “it’s open season for partisan gerrymandering” across America due to a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough represent House Speaker Bob Cupp and Senate President Matt Huffman, both Lima Republicans, in challenges with the Ohio Supreme Court of GOP maps that likely would preserve the Republicans’ current supermajorities in both branches of the Ohio legislature.
The Raleigh firm’s attorneys, part of one of the nation’s biggest legal outfits that has offices in several states, have represented their state’s legislative leaders in elections disputes with the NAACP, Democratic officials, and others. Lawyers from the Florida office have helped that state’s Republicans in battles over redistricting.
Two associates with the firm wrote an analysis of the June 27, 2019, 5-4 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court — centering on partisan maps from North Carolina and Maryland — that declared federal courts have no jurisdiction to decide congressional redistricting challenges based merely on allegations of political partisanship.
The bottom line of that ruling, in the opinion of the North Carolina lawyers: “Partisan advantage is a permissible intent behind districting choices, and that the issue is to be left to the legislature.”
The groups challenging the Ohio GOP legislative map likely will rely on the fact that the high court’s decision dealt with congressional districts, not state legislative boundaries, and did not bar state courts from ruling on the partisanship issue. The 2015 Ohio Constitution amendment that changed the redistricting process — overwhelmingly approved by voters — also includes language that the districts should reflect the partisan outcome of recent statewide elections.
However, Cupp, Huffman and their legal team now contend such direction is merely “aspirational,” not legally required.
The two also are represented by Taft, Stettinius & Hollister of Cincinnati.
Do Republicans have hidden motive in not considering race for new districts?
Ohio Democrats protested when Republicans contended that they didn’t even look at the racial make-up when they formed new legislative districts.
But there may be a hidden legal strategy afoot here.
While the U.S. Supreme Court seemingly has prevented legal challenges based on partisanship, laws on racial gerrymandering stand. However, even a map that winds up divided on a racial basis could prove legal if Republicans simply contend they were looking only at partisanship, not race.
“The Supreme Court has created this weird binary — if it’s on the racial side, it’s bad, but if it’s on the partisan side, it’s OK,” Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Social Justice in New York City told the Associated Press.
Indeed, GOP legislators in North Carolina legislature declared early on that they wouldn’t use racial data to prepare district maps.
Ohio Republican leaders also maintain that they never analyzed the partisan balance of their proposed maps for House and Senate districts; they just happened to wind up with districts in which the GOP is expected to hold 67 of 99 seats in the Ohio House and 25 of 33 seats in the Ohio Senate.
Five federal judges based in Ohio named for improper financial conflicts
A member of an Ohio-based federal appeals court was one of just two appellate judges in the country who technically broke a 1974 law by failing to recuse themselves from lawsuits involving companies in which they or a family member held stock, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.
Judge Julia Smith Gibbons of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, authored an opinion that favored Ford Motor Co. in a trademark dispute while her husband held stock in the automaker, the Journal found. After she and the others on a three-judge panel heard arguments, but before they ruled, her husband’s financial adviser twice bought Ford stock valued at up to
$15,000 for his retirement account, her financial disclosure form showed.
The 2002 appointee of President George W. Bush told the Journal she mistakenly believed that holdings in her husband’s retirement account didn’t require her recusal. Gibbons, from Memphis, later directed the 6th Circuit’s clerk to notify those involved in the lawsuit of her violation, adding that her husband has since told his financial adviser not to buy individual stocks.
“I regret my misunderstanding, but I assure you it was an honest one,” she said.
In addition to the two appeals court judges, the Journal found 129 district court judges also violated the post-watergate statute. That list included Judges Michael Barrett, Susan Dlott and Walter Rice of the district court based in Cincinnati. Barrett and Dlott both directed the court clerk to notify parties in each case of the conflicts.
Rice told the Journal, “I think the fact that three cases got by me indicate that the system isn’t working perfectly. I think the system should work perfectly. It’s a question of not only avoiding conflicts apparent or real but it’s about maintaining respect for the judiciary.”
Also cited was Judge James Gwinn of the district court based in Cleveland, who said, “We have tried to use a system for recognizing conflicts, but the clerk’s
office and I did not catch it when this case was reassigned to me.”
Check out which Ohio hospitals are getting the most COVID relief cash
Ohio hospitals have received more than $3 billion so far from $178 billion allocated by Congress and the Trump administration last year to alleviate the financial toll on health-care providers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Topping the list compiled by the newsletter STAT: the Cleveland Clinic, whose $406 million ranked eighth in the U.S.
The other biggest Buckeye State recipients of the Provider Relief Fund:
• Ohio State University Hospitals — $134 million
• Ohiohealth, parent of larger hospitals such as Grant and Riverside in Columbus, as well as smaller hospitals in such locales as Marion, Circleville and Mansfield — $119 million
• Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati — $92 million
• Mount Carmel Health System, Westerville — $74 million
• Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus — $74 million drowland@dispatch.com @darreldrowland