Earlier today, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio denied Ohio’s request to the court for an order compelling the U.S. Census Bureau to deliver redistricting data to the state by the statutory deadline of March 31.
Ultimately the court denied the request for a preliminary injunction for lack of standing because the Census Bureau’s failure to meet its deadline in and of itself does not constitute a redressable injury, explaining that “A litigant is not concretely injured and standing is not met simply because a statute creates a legal obligation that goes unfulfilled.”
In an opinion that at times chastised the plaintiffs for asking something of a federal agency that it has already confirmed is impossible to do, the court pointed out that delayed data does not necessarily mean that Ohio will not meet its statutory deadlines for redistricting. “Ohio may well be able to redraw its districts by the time of its legislative and congressional primary and general elections in 2022 using census data released in September. The fact that the census data is not available to Ohio on the schedule it prefers, does not harm the State if it can still redistrict by the time of its next elections.”
The court also pointed out that Ohio’s own constitution contemplates the use of “other data” if federal census data is unavailable. The opinion did not address whether using alternative data sets could put the state in jeopardy of lawsuits that might challenge the accuracy of redrawn districts under the 14th Amendment. In fact, the court explained further that ” . . . no stricture of the federal government requires States to use decennial census data in redistricting, so long as the redistricting complies with the Constitution and the Voting Right Act.”
