A U.S. Supreme Court ruling anticipated this spring in an Arizona case probably will not provide Republicans a legal reason to delay efforts to overhaul Ohio’s heavily criticized system for designing congressional districts, legal analysts say. Although the Ohio House and Senate cleared the way last month for a November vote on changing the way state legislative districts are drawn, Republican lawmakers in Columbus deferred sending voters a similar reform plan that would have created a more bipartisan way to draw up Ohio’s 16 congressional districts. While critics have complained that GOP lawmakers dropped congressional redistricting because the current U.S. House districts are so favorable to their candidates and changes are opposed by U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, Michael Braden, a Washington attorney who has advised Republicans on the Arizona case, said “that’s just not true.”
“It’s my view that it didn’t make any sense to proceed with congressional (changes) when the Supreme Court may tell you what you can do and not do,” said Braden, a partner in the Washington office of the Columbus law firm of Baker & Hostetler. “What I told (GOP lawmakers) is, why would you do this when what you do could be totally wrong from the Supreme Court’s point of view?”
Kara Hauck, a spokeswoman for Boehner, said the West Chester Republican “has said that until the Supreme Court rules on the Arizona redistricting case, he doesn’t think the Ohio legislature should make any decisions on congressional redistricting. Why pass a law now that may not be constitutional?”
Full Article: Lawsuit, Boehner delaying Ohio redistricting reforms | The Columbus Dispatch.