Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor getting National press [View all]

[Diamond_Dog]

What’s this? A Republican Chief Justice bucking her own party to keep redistricting fair?

Ohio is such a paradox.

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The Republican judge blocking her party from rigging electoral districts

Some Republicans are calling for Ohio supreme court chief justice Maureen O’Connor’s impeachment because she is refusing to let them distort electoral districts to their advantage

In one of the final acts in a 24-year political career, the Republican chief justice of the Ohio supreme court is defying her party and refusing to let them distort electoral districts to their advantage, a move that has some fellow Republicans calling for her impeachment.

Since January, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor has served as the decisive vote on three separate occasions blocking Ohio Republicans from enacting proposed state legislative maps. She also sided with Democrats to block an initial GOP proposal for congressional districts before going into effect in January. Those decisions have prompted chatter among Republicans about impeaching O’Connor, 70, who will leave the court after nearly two decades at the end of this year because she has reached the mandatory retirement age for judges in Ohio.

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In 2018, she joined with the lone Democrat on the court to dissent from a ruling upholding the forced closure of the last abortion clinic in Toledo. She has backed criminal justice and bail reform, as other Ohio Republicans are pushing to make it harder for someone to be released on bond. She has called for less partisan influence in the way judges are elected in the state. In 2020, just before the presidential election, she blasted the state Republican party for accusing a local judge of colluding with Democrats, saying the attack was “disgraceful and deceitful”.

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O’Connor has bluntly called out the way Ohio Republicans are abusing the redistricting process. The first time the court struck down the legislative maps, back in January, she went out of her way to write a concurring opinion urging Ohio voters to strip lawmakers of their redistricting power entirely.

After the court blocked Republican maps for the third time, Republicans in the statehouse began openly weighing her impeachment, according to the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s time to impeach Maureen O’Connor now,” Scott Wiggam, a GOP state Representative, tweeted. “I don’t understand what the woman wants,” state representative Sara Carruthers told the Dispatch. Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose, a Republican who sits on the panel that draws districts, said recently he would not stand in the way of an impeachment effort, saying “she has not upheld her oath of office”.

Though it’s unclear if the impeachment effort will move forward, many doubted it would succeed.

Both O’Neill and Pfeifer, the former justices who served with O’Connor said they were confident the impeachment efforts would affect her work. “What in the world is she supposed to have done that violated her oath of office?,” O’Neill said.

“It will have the opposite effect of what they’re seeking.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/12/ohio-republican-judge-blocking-party-from-distorting-electoral-districts