Virginia Democrats should emulate Ohio Republicans’ Hard Ball Actions and Ignore Court Orders re: Redistricting

Ohio voters cast ballots in 2022 and in 2024 using maps that the Ohio Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional.

Mike Hersh

May 10, 2026

Opinion

"gerrymander" by Wordsmith.org is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Ohio Republicans violated court rulings and kept running elections using gerrymandered maps. They repeatedly ignored (or only minimally complied with) court orders until deadlines passed. The courts ultimately lacked sufficient ability to compel Ohio to comply with orders and implement acceptable replacement maps. As a result, Ohio voters cast ballots in 2022 and in 2024 using maps that the Ohio Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional. [1][2][3]

What the courts said:

The Ohio Supreme Court struck down multiple sets of state legislative maps and congressional maps because they violated Ohio’s anti-gerrymandering rules and unfairly favored Republicans. News coverage and legal summaries describe the court rejecting five sets of legislative maps and two congressional maps, each time ordering the state to try again. The court’s January 2022 congressional ruling ordered lawmakers to pass a new map within 30 days, and later rulings gave similar redraw deadlines for legislative maps.[4][5][6][7][8]

How Ohio Republicans defied the rulings:

The practical tactic was delay. Ohio Republican officials on the redistricting commission kept submitting maps that were only slightly changed from ones already rejected, which bought time while the election calendar kept moving forward. In some instances, they simply failed to reconvene or missed the deadline to produce a court-compliant map, and critics said this was an intentional “run out the clock” strategy.[9][10][11][12]

The unconstitutional maps remained in use because although the Ohio Supreme Court could invalidate maps, it could not itself redraw a replacement map. That meant as Ohio officials missed (or ignored) deadlines, the system remained at an impasse between an invalid map and no ready alternative. With filing deadlines and primary dates approaching, a federal court stepped in for the 2022 cycle and ordered Ohio to use one of the invalidated legislative maps, finding there was no time to do otherwise.[2][3]

Ohio officials forced voters to use maps the state’s highest court rejected in the 2022 elections, claiming that the election timetable forced a choice between proceeding with unconstitutional maps or disrupting the election. The congressional map dispute continued into 2023, when the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed the challenge, leaving the highly partisan GOP-drawn map in place for 2024. The same basic pattern repeated with court rulings against the maps, partisan refusal and delays, and elections going forward under unconstitutional maps.[3][5][13][1][2]

Key lessons:

This was not a mere technical legal disagreement; it was a naked partisan power grab. Ohio voters had approved constitutional reforms meant to curb partisan gerrymandering, the courts upheld the voters’ will, but Republicans ruthlessly stalled and ignored judicial and public decisions until the deadlines ran out. In effect, Republicans used the timing of the election system as leverage to impose unfairly drawn maps that courts had already deemed improper.[5][10][14][15]

Virginia Democrats can and should emulate Ohio Republicans’ refusal to respect court orders. Unlike in the Ohio example in which partisan Republicans ignored the public will, Virginia voters already ratified the new maps via referendum.

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