HONORABLE KAREN NELSON MOORE, United States Circuit Judge, HONORABLE TIMOTHY S. BLACK, United States District Judge, HONORABLE MICHAEL H. WATSON, United States District Judge *992TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. BACKGROUND...994
A. General Overview of the Facts...994
B. Procedural History...1009
II. SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED AT TRIAL...1010
A. Plaintiffs' Fact Witnesses...1010
B. Defendants' Fact Witnesses...1019
C. Plaintiffs' Expert Witnesses...1025
D. Defendants' and Intervenors' Expert Witnesses...1049
III. STANDING...1062
A. Vote-Dilution Claims...1063
B. First Amendment Associational Claim...1073
C. Article I Claim...1076
IV. JUSTICIABILITY, THE POLITICAL QUESTION DOCTRINE, AND THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL COURTS IN REDISTRICTING...1076
A. Justiciability and The Political Question Doctrine...1076
B. Evidentiary Metrics and Statistics...1082
C. Pragmatic and Historical Considerations...1085
V. LEGAL STANDARDS AND APPLICATION...1092
A. Equal Protection Vote-Dilution Claim...1093
B. First Amendment Vote-Dilution Claim...1150
C. First Amendment Associational Claim...1151
D. Article I Claim...1163
VI. LACHES...1165
VII. REMEDY AND ORDER...1168
APPENDICES OF MAPS
Plaintiffs have brought this action alleging that H.B. 369, the redistricting plan enacted by the Ohio General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor in 2011, constitutes an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and exceeds the powers *993granted to the states under Article I, ยง 4 of the United States Constitution. As to the First and Fourteenth Amendment district-specific claims, we find that Districts 1-16 were intended to burden Plaintiffs' constitutional rights, had that effect, and the effect is not explained by other legitimate justifications. Moreover, we find that that the plan as a whole burdens Plaintiffs' associational rights and that burden is not outweighed by any other legitimate justification. Finally, we find that the plan exceeds the State's powers under Article I. Therefore, H.B. 369 is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. This opinion constitutes our findings of fact and conclusions of law pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a)(1).
Due to the length of this opinion, we provide the reader with the following, more concise summary:
"Partisan gerrymandering" occurs when the dominant party in government draws district lines to entrench itself in power and to disadvantage the disfavored party's voters. Plaintiffs in this action are individual Democratic voters from each of Ohio's sixteen congressional districts, two non-partisan pro-democracy organizations, and three Democratic-aligned organizations. They challenge the constitutionality of Ohio's 2012 redistricting map. Defendants are Ohio officials, and Intervenors are Ohio Republican Congressmen; Defendants and Intervenors both argue that the Plaintiffs' claims are not properly before this Court and defend the map's constitutionality on the merits.
In 2011, when Ohio's redistricting process began, Republican dominance in the Ohio State government meant that Republican state legislators could push through a remarkably pro-Republican redistricting bill without meaningful input from their Democratic colleagues. Ohio Republicans took advantage of that opportunity, and invidious partisan intent-the intent to disadvantage Democratic voters and entrench Republican representatives in power-dominated the map-drawing process. They designed the 2012 map using software that allowed them to predict the partisan outcomes that would result from the lines they drew based on various partisan indices that they created from historical Ohio election data. The Ohio map drawers did not work alone, but rather national Republican operatives located in Washington, D.C. collaborated with them throughout the process. These national Republicans generated some of the key strategic ideas for the map, maximizing its likely pro-Republican performance, and had the authority to approve changes to the map before their Ohio counterparts implemented them. Throughout the process, the Ohio and national map drawers made decisions based on their likely partisan effects.
The map drawers focused on several key areas of the Ohio map where careful map design could eke out additional safe Republican seats. They split Hamilton County and the City of Cincinnati in a strange, squiggly, curving shape, dividing its Democratic voters and preventing them from forming a coherent voting bloc, which ensured the election of Republican representatives in Districts 1 and 2. They drew a new District 3 in Franklin County, efficiently concentrating Democratic voters together in an area sometimes referred to as the "Franklin County Sinkhole." This strategy allowed them to secure healthy Republican majorities in neighboring Districts 12 and 15. They paired Democratic incumbent Representatives Kaptur and Kucinich to create the infamous "Snake on the Lake"-a bizarre, elongated sliver of a district that severed numerous counties. They drew a District 11 that departed from its traditional territory to snatch up additional African-American Democratic *994voters in Summit County, allowing for the creation of a new District 16 in which a Republican incumbent representative could defeat a Democratic incumbent representative. They designed these districts with one overarching goal in mind-the creation of an Ohio congressional map that would reliably elect twelve Republican representatives and four Democratic representatives.
Ohio Republican legislators enacted the first iteration of the 2012 map, H.B. 319, in September 2011. Ohio voters then challenged the map, seeking to subject it to a voter referendum, but their efforts failed. As a result, Ohio Republicans passed a slightly different version of the map, H.B. 369, in December 2011. The changes they made did not materially alter the strong pro-Republican partisan leaning of the map's first iteration. Four cycles of congressional elections have occurred under the map embodied in H.B. 369. Each resulted in the election of twelve Republican representatives and four Democratic representatives. No district has been represented by representatives from different parties during the life of the map.
During a two-week trial, experts testified to the extremity of the gerrymander. They demonstrated that levels of voter support for Democrats can and have changed, but the map's partisan output remains stubbornly undisturbed. The experts used various metrics and methodologies to measure their findings, but several takeaways were universal: (1) the Ohio map sacrifices respect for traditional districting principles in order to maximize pro-Republican partisan advantage, (2) the Ohio map's pro-Republican partisan bias is extreme, compared both to historical plans across the United States and to other possible configurations that could have been adopted in Ohio, and (3) the Ohio map minimizes responsiveness and competition, rendering one consistent result no matter the particularities of the election cycle.
We join the other federal courts that have held partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional and developed substantially similar standards for adjudicating such claims. We are convinced by the evidence that this partisan gerrymander was intentional and effective and that no legitimate justification accounts for its extremity. Performing our analysis district by district, we conclude that the 2012 map dilutes the votes of Democratic voters by packing and cracking them into districts that are so skewed toward one party that the electoral outcome is predetermined. We conclude that the map unconstitutionally burdens associational rights by making it more difficult for voters and certain organizations to advance their aims, be they pro-Democratic or pro-democracy. We conclude that by creating such a map, the State exceeded its powers under Article I of the Constitution. Accordingly, we declare Ohio's 2012 map an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, enjoin its use in the 2020 election, and order the enactment of a constitutionally viable replacement.
I. BACKGROUND
A. General Overview of the Facts
1. The redistricting process begins
Every ten years, the United States government conducts a census. The census results dictate the size of each state's delegation to the United States House of Representatives because House seats are based on population. Following the release of the census results, state legislatures redraw their United States congressional districts in order to reflect population changes. In Ohio, the 2010 census revealed that the State's comparative population stagnation required reducing the State's previous congressional delegation from *995eighteen to sixteen.
In Ohio, redistricting is facilitated by the Joint Legislative Task Force on Redistricting, Reapportionment, and Demographic Research ("Task Force"). The Task Force is a six-person bipartisan committee.
2. Logistics of the Republican map drawing
Republican map-drawing planning occurred at both the State and federal levels, and the two levels worked together, collaborated, and consulted one another throughout the process.
DiRossi secured a room at the DoubleTree Hotel in Columbus beginning in July 2011 to serve as the base for the map-drawing operations.
Mann, DiRossi, and Judy each used a computer equipped with a software package called "Maptitude."
As mentioned above, much of the data that the map drawers used had been furnished to them through a contract that the Ohio General Assembly entered into with CSU. CSU created and provided the Task Force with the Ohio Common Unified Redistricting Database ("Database" or "OCURD").
Mann, DiRossi, and Judy were tasked by the Republican Caucuses with drawing maps that were favorable to Republicans. Many Republican leaders indicated their preference for a 12-4 map.
Various indices were used because individuals involved in the map-drawing process preferred different indices. At times they used an index that they created and termed the "Unified Index."
Individuals not involved in the day-to-day map drawing were sometimes shown the draft districts' predicted partisan proclivities as assessed with various indices.
3. National Republican involvement
National Republican operatives supported the State-level map drawers in their work from beginning to end. This collaboration started prior to the map drawing itself, when Ohio Republican staffers such as DiRossi, Mann, Judy, Schuler, and Chief Legal Counsel for the Ohio House Republican Caucus Michael Lenzo, as well as Representative Huffman attended a redistricting conference hosted by the National Conference of State Legislatures ("NCSL") in Washington, D.C.
At the Spring 2010 seminar, Morgan gave a presentation on map drawing, advising map drawers to keep the process secret and to score the maps to determine the likely partisan outcome.
At the time of the census and redistricting, Congressman John Boehner of Ohio was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Ohio Republicans understood that Speaker Boehner would have considerable input in the 2012 map and were committed to enacting a map that he supported.
Whatman employed Adam Kincaid, the Redistricting Coordinator of the National Republican Congressional Committee ("NRCC"), to assist in the redistricting efforts. Kincaid drafted proposed maps and district lines that incorporated Whatman's requests and sent them to DiRossi and Mann and, on occasion, Braden.
4. Major features of H.B. 319
Because of the stagnation in Ohio's population compared to other states, two districts had to be eliminated. This meant that if all incumbents were to run for office, at least two sets of incumbents would have to be paired. The Republicans decided to pair two Republican representatives and two Democratic representatives.
As for the Democratic pairing, the map drawers paired Representative Marcy Kaptur of former District 9 and Representative Dennis Kucinich of former District 10; Kaptur won the Democratic primary that ensued. Kaptur testified that she did not want to be paired with Kucinich,
The map drawers also paired Republican Representative Jim Renacci of the former District 16 and Democratic Representative Betty Sutton of the former District 13 to run against each other in the new District 16. DiRossi testified that the third pairing was necessitated by: drawing District 11 to include portions of Akron, population loss in Northeast Ohio, "two congresspeople who were living very close together," and the creation of the new District 3 in Franklin County.
The map drawers drew District 11 to include some portions of the City of Cleveland in Cuyahoga County and a thin strip dropping southward into Summit County where it incorporated sections of the City of Akron. Representative Marcia Fudge, who had represented District 11 under the previous map prior to the 2011 redistricting, was not consulted by Republican map drawers and did not learn of District 11's new boundaries until around the time that H.B. 319 was introduced in the legislature.
*1002The map drawers created a new district, District 3, in Franklin County, where the City of Columbus is located. Columbus had been experiencing population growth while metropolitan areas in northern Ohio had been losing population.
State-level and national Republican operatives emailed back and forth sharing and consulting on plans for this new district. Kincaid created a proposed map that included such a district, which scored as D+15 using his PVI metric, and shared the draft map with DiRossi and Mann.
For a time, the Republicans considered drawing a map that would include "13 'safe' seats" for their party rather than twelve.
The map drawers sometimes rejected specific requests from Republican members of the Ohio General Assembly, instead prioritizing maintaining the partisan balance of the draft map. For example, State Senator Christopher Widener requested that the map keep Clark County whole.
The resulting map featured twelve districts likely to elect a Republican representative (Districts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 16) and four districts likely to elect a Democratic Representative (Districts 3, 9, 11, and 13).
5. Secrecy surrounding the map
The Republican map drawers did not share plans for the map with either the public or Democratic legislators or staffers prior to introducing it in the Ohio House of Representatives.
6. Passage of H.B. 319
The Ohio Republicans first introduced a 2012 redistricting map in the form of H.B. 319 on September 13, 2011 in the House State Government and Elections Committee. The Committee referred the bill to the House, and it was debated on the floor of *1005the House on September 15, 2011.
On September 19, 2011, H.B. 319 was introduced in the Ohio State Senate. The Senate Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, chaired by Senator Faber, then held hearings on the bill.
7. Referendum and negotiations
Despite the appropriation amendment intended to insulate the map from a voter referendum, Ohio voters sought to mount such a referendum. A group of Ohio voters filed a petition for a writ of mandamus with the Supreme Court of Ohio. They sought an order declaring that H.B. 319 could indeed be subjected to a voter referendum. State ex rel. Ohioans for Fair Dists. v. Husted ,
This also meant that H.B. 319 would not take effect until December 25, 2011, after the December 7, 2011 candidate filing deadline set for the March 2012 primaries.
In the shadow of the possible referendum and split primaries, Ohio Republican and Democratic legislators attempted to negotiate some alterations to H.B. 319 that could be enacted as a new bill-H.B. 369.
*1007DiRossi, Mann, and Judy worked with Maptitude at their office at the Ohio House of Representatives to draw minor changes into the redistricting map in the period between the passage of H.B. 319 and H.B. 369.
On November 3, 2011 Representative Huffman introduced the new Republican redistricting bill, H.B. 369, in the House Rules and Reference Committee; he gave sponsor testimony in the committee on November 9. H.B. 369 would eliminate the newly split primary.
8. Passage of H.B. 369
On December 14, 2011, both the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate passed an amended version of H.B. 369, over vigorous opposition from some Democrats.
Following the passage of H.B. 369, Kincaid created a spreadsheet that documented his analysis of the partisan outcomes of the newly enacted map.
U.S. Representative Stivers's communications with his staff reflected his similar *1009belief that various previously competitive districts had been made solidly Republican as a result of the redistricting. For example, he stated that "[t]he redistricting in Ohio did shore up some of the toss-up districts" based on the changes in the PVI scores for Districts 1, 6, and 15.
9. Congressional elections under the 2012 Map
As predicted by Kincaid, the same four Ohio congressional districts (Districts 3, 9, 11, and 13) have elected Democratic representatives, and the same twelve districts (Districts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 16) have elected Republican representatives in every election since the enactment of the 2012 map.
B. Procedural History
Plaintiffs include seventeen individual Ohio residents, who collectively reside and vote in each of Ohio's sixteen congressional districts, and five organizations based in Ohio. The individual Plaintiffs are: Linda Goldenhar, Douglas Burks, Sarah Inskeep, Cynthia Libster, Kathryn Deitsch, LuAnn Boothe, Mark John Griffiths, Lawrence Nadler, Chitra Walker, Tristan Rader, Ria Megnin, Andrew Harris, Aaron Dagres, Elizabeth Myer, Beth Hutton, Teresa Thobaben, and Constance Rubin. The organizational Plaintiffs, which include nonpartisan groups as well as groups affiliated with the Democratic Party, are: the Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute ("APRI"), the League of Women Voters of Ohio ("The League"), The Ohio State University College Democrats ("OSU College Democrats"), the Northeast Ohio Young Black Democrats ("NEOYBD"), and the Hamilton County Young Democrats ("HCYD").
Defendants are State Representative Larry Householder, Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives; State Senator Larry Obhof, President of the Ohio State Senate; and Ohio's Secretary of State, Frank LaRose. All Defendants are sued in their official capacities.
Plaintiffs filed this lawsuit on May 23, 2018. Dkt. 1 (First Compl.). This three-judge panel was then convened pursuant to
The case then proceeded through discovery, and on January 8, 2019, Defendants moved for summary judgment. See Dkt.
*1010136 (Mot. for Summ. J.); Dkt. 140, 140-1 (Intervenors' Suppl. Mot. for Summ. J. & Mem.). After a round of briefing, we denied the motion for summary judgment. See Ohio A. Philip Randolph Inst. v. Householder ,
Since the trial, the parties have filed post-trial briefs with proposed conclusions of law, and separately, proposed findings of fact. The parties have also finalized their objections to the other side's evidence, responded to each other's objections, and submitted additional briefs on those objections.
II. SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED AT TRIAL
A. Plaintiffs' Fact Witnesses
1. Individual Plaintiffs
Individual Plaintiffs Douglas Burks, Mark Griffiths, Aaron Dagres, and Elizabeth Myer testified at trial. They live in District 2, District 7, District 12, and District 13, respectively. The remainder of the individual Plaintiffs, who reside in the rest of the congressional districts, testified via deposition. All individual Plaintiffs testified to their affiliation with the Democratic Party and/or that they consistently vote for Democratic candidates. See infra Sections III.A.1.-16. In addition to being Democratic voters, the individual Plaintiffs are politically active in supporting, volunteering for, and working for Democratic candidates and causes.
2. Organizational Plaintiffs
APRI, the League, and HCYD each testified at trial through a representative, and some additional members of the organizations supplemented the testimony. Several themes ran throughout this testimony. First, the organizations actively engage in politics by encouraging citizens to vote, registering and educating voters, and in the case of HCYD, advocating on behalf of Democratic candidates. Second, in their experience, voter outreach and engagement work was made more difficult by continuously encountering significant voter apathy. They heard voters state their beliefs that their votes did not matter; voters believed that the outcome of any given election was preordained and that the same Republican or Democrat would be elected regardless of whether they voted. Third, the organizational plaintiffs encountered voter confusion-voters did not know to which district they belonged, who represented them, or who was running for office in their districts. Fourth, the organizational plaintiffs testified that they were forced to divert resources from their other work to address this voter apathy and confusion. Individual members of the organizations testified about their involvement with their organizations and their own political work supporting the elections of Democratic candidates. They testified that in their experience, they found their Republican congressional representatives unresponsive to them and not engaged in their communities. They also explained how their communities had been split into different districts under the 2012 map.
Andre Washington, the president of APRI, testified at trial on the organization's behalf.
Washington testified that he has personally witnessed voter apathy-people feeling like their vote does not matter-while attempting to engage voters in his own district.
Stephanie White, the vice president of APRI's Toledo chapter, also testified at trial.
Jennifer Miller, the Executive Director of the League testified at trial on the organization's behalf.
Miller testified that the League spends resources combating voter apathy and confusion due to the 2012 map that it then cannot spend on its other initiatives such as voter registration and education.
John Fitzpatrick, a member of the League and a voter in District 14 also testified at trial.
Fitzpatrick also testified about voters in the Akron area being confused about the district in which they live. He himself attempted to use a "congressional house finder" tool to determine his congressional district, but typing in his zip code produced two possible districts.
Nathaniel Simon, the outgoing president of the HCYD, testified on the organization's behalf.
many people who came out of the polling booth asked why wasn't Aftab Pureval on my ballot ... I had to explain to them that they are in the 2nd Congressional District, but to the east and west of Silverton is the 1st Congressional District. Also, in my neighborhood, which is in the 2nd Congressional District, there were Aftab Pureval signs, and he is the candidate for the 1st district.170
Simon also testified that the district lines have made it more difficult for HCYD to attract and retain members.
NEOYBD and OSU College Democrats' testimony was introduced through designated depositions. NEOYBD is a Democratic group that "looks to mentor, empower and recruit the next generation of young people of color who want to be involved in the political process."
Alexis Oberdorf is the President of the OSU College Democrats and was the *1015group's Rule 30(b)(6) representative.
3. Congresswoman Marcia Fudge
Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, representative to the United States House of Representatives from Ohio's Congressional District 11, testified for Plaintiffs at trial.
Congresswoman Fudge described the historical contours of District 11. When Congresswoman Fudge took office in 2008, District 11 "was primarily a little better than two-thirds of the city of Cleveland and most of the southeast suburbs."
Congresswoman Fudge unequivocally stated that she "didn't have any role" in the drawing of the new congressional map in 2011.
Congresswoman Fudge stated that after learning of the new map, the only complaint that she voiced was her belief that allocating "Summit County or that portion of Akron" to the new District 11 "would make it almost impossible" for Democratic Representative Sutton to win an election in the new District 16.
Congresswoman Fudge admitted that she did not tell any of the people that she *1017spoke with in 2011 about District 11 that she did not want District 11 to be a majority-minority district.
4. State Senator Nina Turner
State Senator Nina Turner, a former Democratic member of the Ohio State Senate, testified for Plaintiffs as a fact witness. Senator Turner served Ohio's 25th State Senate District from 2008 to 2014. At the time of the 2011 redistricting, Senator Turner testified that the State Senate was comprised of ten Democratic Senators, five of whom were African American, and twenty-three Republican Senators.
Senator Turner also gave a floor speech against H.B. 319, in part addressing the justification that the District 11 was drawn to comply with the VRA.
As recounted above, after H.B. 319 was enacted into law, Democratic state legislators sought a referendum to overturn the law, which required a certain number of signatures.
Senator Turner spoke against H.B. 369 in a floor speech similar to the one she made against H.B. 319. In this floor speech, Senator Turner stated that "[t]o say that this map is bipartisan is laughable" because, as she stated at trial, she believed that "the mere fact that some Democrats, for whatever reason, decided to vote for the bill does not make it bipartisan."
Finally, on cross-examination, Senator Turner admitted that she considered running against Congresswoman Fudge in the 2012 Democratic primary, but she dropped out because she believed that the redistricting process was manipulated to guarantee the reelection of incumbent politicians.
5. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur
Plaintiffs called Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, as a rebuttal witness. Representative Kaptur won election to Congress in 1982 and has served *1019Ohio's Congressional District 9 since 1983. She is the most senior member of Ohio's congressional delegation.
B. Defendants' Fact Witnesses
1. Raymond DiRossi
Raymond DiRossi testified at trial for Defendants as a fact witness, and he was one of the principal map drawers during the 2011 redistricting process. He also played a role in the 2001 redistricting process.
DiRossi testified that, in 2011, he was "very prominent" in the congressional redistricting process and that "basically, the process was the same" as in 2001.
To deal with the loss of two incumbents (because Ohio lost two congressional seats), DiRossi testified that "the decision was made to pair two Republicans together and two Democrats together. So we would have ended up with" twelve Republicans *1020and four Democrats.
DiRossi further testified to changes made to various other districts, purportedly at the request of (occasionally unspecified) Democrats, and to the effects those changes had on the map as a whole.
*1021Negotiations between state legislative Democrats and state legislative Republicans began around the time of the attempted petition drive (after H.B. 319).
With respect to District 3, DiRossi similarly testified that a "back and forth" occurred between Bob Bennett, Republican legislative leaders, "some other people," and Joyce Beatty and her husband Otto.
Some changes did, in fact, occur between H.B. 319 and H.B. 369. DiRossi testified to these changes and explained an exhibit that illustrates them.
As to the logistics of the actual map-drawing process, DiRossi testified to that he used Maptitude and the Unified Index that he created.
DiRossi admitted that in 2011 he worked with Adam Kincaid, from the RNC, and that Kincaid "was one of a number of people that would send ideas or [DiRossi] could bounce ideas off."
2. Speaker William Batchelder
Former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives William Batchelder testified for Defendants at trial, explaining how Districts 11 and 3 came to be.
*1023a. District 11
Speaker Batchelder testified that he knew George Forbes, the former president of the city council of Cleveland "very well" and would occasionally discuss "matters that were coming before the house" with Forbes.
On cross-examination, Speaker Batchelder admitted that he "never personally had communications with Representative Fudge" about the composition of District 11.
b. District 3
Speaker Batchelder testified about the creation of the new District 3 in the Columbus area. He stated that he "first had consulted with the chairman of the Republican Party there, and he indicated that there was not going to be a viable candidate for his party."
3. Troy Judy
Troy Judy had a long history of working for the Ohio House of Representatives and served as the Chief of Staff to Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives William Batchelder during the redistricting process.
Judy testified that "[a]fter [H.B.] 319 was passed, the Democrats, of course, announced a referendum on the bill and began collecting signatures.... And with the overarching pressure of a referendum, it led us to begin conversations with members of the Democratic caucus."
Judy testified that District 3 had been a "priorit[y]" of Speaker Batchelder's.
Judy testified that District 9 was drawn in response to the Democratic leadership's desire that Representative Marcy Kaptur and Representative Dennis Kucinich be the two Democratic incumbents paired.
Judy also testified about the contours of District 11. He stated that Speaker Batchelder had relationships with members of the African-American community in Cleveland, including George Forbes, and has "consulted" for many years with these individuals "with respect to any issues that would affect the African-American community."
Judy testified that when the Republican map drawers began negotiations with Democratic individuals in an effort to pass the second iteration of the map, Bob Bennett played a key role in these communications, serving as a "back channel to Congresswoman Fudge ... to communicate with us about the shape of [District 11]."
On cross-examination, Judy admitted that despite changes that were made to H.B. 369 prior to its passage, it looked "substantially similar" to the initial version of H.B. 369 introduced by the Republicans members of the General Assembly.
C. Plaintiffs' Expert Witnesses
1. Dr. Christopher Warshaw
Dr. Christopher Warshaw testified at trial for Plaintiffs as an expert witness. Dr. Warshaw is a tenure-track assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University, teaching courses on political science, elections, public opinion, statistical methodology, and political representation.
a. Partisan-bias metrics
Dr. Warshaw testified at length about four
The concept of "wasted" votes underlies both of these strategies.
Dr. Warshaw used the efficiency gap, symmetry in the vote-seat curve, the mean-median difference, and the declination metric to measure partisan bias in the 2012 map.
i. Efficiency Gap
The efficiency gap compares the wasted votes for each party by calculating "the difference between the parties' respective wasted votes, divided by the total number *1027of votes cast in the election."
Dr. Warshaw surveyed historical efficiency gaps across the country and found that they were generally quite small. Around 75% were between -10% and 10%, and only around 4% had an efficiency gap of greater than 20% in either direction.
ii. Partisan symmetry in the vote-seat curve
Symmetry in the vote-seat curve compares how both parties' seat shares change as their vote shares increase or decrease.
iii. Mean-median gap
The mean-median gap reflects "the difference between a party's vote share in the median district and their average vote share across all districts. If the party wins more votes in the median district than in the average district, they have an advantage in the translation of votes to seats."
iv. Declination
Lastly, the declination metric involves graphically plotting the districts in a plan from least Democratic to most Democratic and then measuring and comparing the angles formed by best-fit lines for each party's seats measured from the 50% Democratic vote share line.
v. Strengths and weaknesses of the metrics
Dr. Warshaw highlighted some of the strengths and weaknesses of each partisan-bias metric. For example, a strength of the efficiency gap is that it "can be calculated directly from observed election returns even when the parties' statewide vote shares are not equal."
*1029
b. Requirements of a partisan gerrymander
Dr. Warshaw testified about how he determines in his academic work whether a redistricting plan is a partisan gerrymander. According to Dr. Warshaw, to qualify as a partisan gerrymander, a districting plan must satisfy four different elements. First, a single party must have controlled the redistricting process-meaning that in a state with a bicameral legislature, it must have had control of both houses and the governorship-and that same party must be favored by the map.
*1030Dr. Warshaw found that under this rubric, the 2012 plan was a partisan gerrymander because: (1) the Republican Party controlled the redistricting process and the map favored the Republican Party; (2) all four of his partisan metrics indicated that the Republicans were actually advantaged in the translation of votes to seats; (3) the map was an outlier when compared to the dataset of hundreds of historical maps; and (4) all four partisan metrics pointed in the same direction-toward a pro-Republican bias.
c. Responsiveness, competitiveness, and durability
Dr. Warshaw also evaluated the responsiveness and competitiveness of the 2012 map. Responsiveness measures "how insulated a plan is from changes in voter preferences" or, conversely, "how likely the election results are to change due to changes in voter preferences."
Dr. Warshaw concluded that Ohio's present map "has led to historically uncompetitive elections."
Dr. Warshaw also found that the effects of the 2012 map are durable throughout time.
d. Polarization, representation, and trust in representatives
Dr. Warshaw testified about political polarization and its impact on representation. He defined polarization as "the distance between the average preferences of members of the two parties."
e. Proposed Remedial Plan
Dr. Warshaw used the same data to analyze the Proposed Remedial Plan as he did with the 2012 map and found that the Proposed Remedial Plan had far lower levels of partisan bias and higher levels of responsiveness than the 2012 map; it "had no substantial partisan bias."
2. Dr. Wendy K. Tam Cho
Dr. Wendy K. Tam Cho testified at trial for Plaintiffs as an expert witness. Dr. Cho is a full professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and she holds appointments in several departments, including political science, statistics, and mathematics.
Dr. Cho testified about her analysis of the current map and its partisan characteristics as compared to a set of simulated maps that she generated. Dr. Cho used an Evolutionary Markov Chain Monte Carlo ("EMCMC") algorithm
Dr. Cho's simulations can be analogized to a coin toss. For example, if you toss a coin 1,000 times, and the coin lands on heads 582 times, that is one datapoint. If you flip the coin another 1,000 times, and the coin lands on heads 602 times, that is another datapoint. Running through this process many times (e.g., 3 million) provides a fuller picture of the typical outcomes. With a fair coin, outcomes of around 500-heads and 500-tails would be typical; 950-heads or even 1,000-heads out of 1,000 flips are also theoretically possible, but such outcomes would be surprising if the coin tosses were done with a fair coin. In this redistricting context, Dr. Cho generated over 3-million simulated maps and then analyzed the seat share between the parties under each. This process allowed her to compare how typical a 12-4 seat share between Republicans and Democrats would be under a neutral map-drawing process and, thus, to analyze whether it is likely that the 12-4 seat share can be explained by factors such as Ohio's natural political geography.
Dr. Cho's methodology includes several key and related components.
Dr. Cho built in several constraints when she produced her simulated maps, and those constraints are what define a map as "feasible" in her simulation. Dr. Cho testified that she arrived at the constraining criteria by "look[ing] at the legislative record to see what the legislature was applying."
*1035Because she concluded from State Representative Huffman's statement that incumbent protection was not a goal of the legislature when drafting the enacted map, Dr. Cho did not include as a constraint the avoidance of pairing incumbents.
After generating the 3,037,645 simulated maps based on only neutral criteria, Dr. Cho engaged in two overarching analyses using partisan data. Again, this use of partisan data came into play only after the simulated maps were produced. First, she engaged in a Plaintiff-specific analysis. Second, she examined the partisan unfairness of the map as a whole by comparing its partisan characteristics to the partisan characteristics of the set of simulated maps.
a. Plaintiff-specific analysis
Dr. Cho was given the home addresses of each individual Plaintiff, which allowed her to determine where each Plaintiff would live in each simulated map and to compare each Plaintiff's current district with each Plaintiff's set of simulated districts. Dr. Cho "compute[d] the average Democratic vote share for the plaintiff's current district by calculating the average Democratic vote share in that district for congressional races from 2012 to 2016 ...."
b. Partisan unfairness analysis
In addition to her Plaintiff-specific analysis, Dr. Cho examined the partisan outcomes of her simulated maps as compared to the current map, which allowed her to assess partisan effect. At a high-level, Dr. Cho assessed competitiveness
i. Competitiveness
Dr. Cho "consider[ed] a district to be competitive if the margin of victory, or the difference between the Republican two-party vote share and the Democratic two-party vote share, is 1) within 5 percentage points and 2) within 10 percentage points."
Based on her analysis of competitiveness, Dr. Cho concludes that "[t]he Republican margins across the entire set of districts [in the current map] are large enough that they are sufficiently insulating to produce an enduring effect."
ii. Responsiveness and bias
In her initial report, which utilized 2008-2010 election data, Dr. Cho assessed the responsiveness and bias in the simulated maps compared to the current map using two measures based on the seats-votes curve (which shows how, as the proportion of votes a party receives increases, so too should that party's seat share).
Dr. Cho employed a symmetry measure to assess biasedness. This measure is grounded in the concept that "both parties should expect to receive the same number of seats given the same vote proportion."
iii. Seat share
Dr. Cho also compared the seat share between the parties from the current map *1038to the seat share in her simulated maps. Based on the use of 2008 and 2010 election data, "none of the [simulated] maps in [Dr. Cho's] sample had the same 12-4 seat share as in the challenged map."
Dr. Cho performed the same analysis using 2012-2014 data and 2018 data in her supplemental report. This analysis shows that over the decade, a 9-7 seat share in favor of Republicans became the most common partisan outcome in the simulated maps.
3. Dr. J. David Niven
Dr. J. David Niven testified at trial for Plaintiffs as an expert witness. Dr. Niven is a tenured associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, and he has a doctorate in political science from The Ohio State University.
Dr. Niven's report and testimony assessed the current map's makeup and the degree to which the districts divide communities of interest and reflect the political preferences of local residents. He undertook this examination by analyzing census tracts
Dr. Niven finds that between the 2002 redistricting plan and the 2012 redistricting plan, the number of census tracts split between multiple congressional districts rose from 209 to 332 (out of approximately 3,000 census tracts).
We credit Dr. Niven's census-tract analysis to the extent that it shows some differential treatment between Republican and Democratic voters, and we observe that this difference is consistent with the nature of other splits (not involving census tracts) present in the current map. We do not give any significant weight to just the raw number of splits, without any further context. For example, census tracts could contain more than one municipality, so a split census tract could nonetheless keep *1040its component municipalities intact.
In his response to Dr. Thornton, Dr. Niven also shows that, using a four-election index,
After his statewide analysis,
a. Hamilton County: Districts 1 and 2
Dr. Niven began his analysis of Hamilton County with District 1. He notes that District 1 swung back and forth between electing Republicans and Democrats under the prior map and that one "academic analysis deemed [District 1] a 'textbook example of a marginal district.' "
Meanwhile, District 2 was and remains safely Republican, but fourteen Cincinnati neighborhoods are divided between Districts 1 and 2.
Throughout his report, Dr. Niven highlighted certain district boundary lines in which the lines divide census tracts populated by Democratic voters. In the case of his example for Hamilton County, the split census tract "is overwhelmingly populated by Democrats" per Dr. Niven's index.
b. District 9
Dr. Niven emphasizes that "[o]ne of the defining aspects of the 9th Congressional district is its comprehensive propensity to divide communities."
c. Franklin County: Districts 3, 12, and 15
Dr. Niven finds that Franklin County both packs (District 3) and cracks (Districts 12 and 15) Democratic voters.
He begins his analysis with District 15, a District which was competitive in 2006 and was won by a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2008.
District 12 under either the 2008 presidential election results or Dr. Niven's index went from a leaning-Democratic district in the prior decade to a strongly-Republican district under the current map.
District 3 is the final Franklin County district addressed by Dr. Niven. He concludes that District 3 "is a classic packing example" because it received Democratic voters from Districts 12 and 15.
Dr. Niven explained how gerrymandered district lines can cause confusion. For example, Dr. Niven found that in Franklin County, voters showed up to the polls for the 2018 special election, only to find out that they did not in fact live in District 12.
d. Summit County: Districts 11, 13, 14, and 16
Summit County's population is small enough such that it could be placed within a single congressional district-yet *1044Summit County is divided into four congressional districts. (The prior map split Summit County into three districts.) Using either the 2008 presidential election or Dr. Niven's index, Dr. Niven's analysis shows that Summit County leaned Democratic.
As for the particular districts in Summit County, Districts 11 and 13 have consistently elected Democratic candidates to Congress under the current map, whereas Districts 14 and 16 have consistently elected Republican candidates. Consistent with these results, using either 2008 presidential election data or Dr. Niven's index, Dr. Niven's analysis shows that voters placed into Districts 11 and 13 leaned heavily in favor of Democratic candidates; meanwhile, voters placed into Districts 14 and 16 were almost evenly divided in the 2008 presidential election, and under Dr. Niven's index, the voters placed in these Districts leaned Republican.
4. Dr. Lisa Handley
Dr. Lisa Handley, an election consultant who works on voting rights and redistricting, testified for Plaintiffs as an expert witness.
*1045District 11 has consistently elected African-American representatives to Congress since 1968, when it was first drawn as a majority Black district.
Dr. Handley conducted a "district-specific, functional analysis of voting patterns by race to ascertain the black voting age population necessary to provide black voters with an opportunity to elect their candidates of choice in the vicinity of the 11th Congressional District of Ohio."
Dr. Handley used three different statistical techniques to complete this analysis: homogeneous-precinct analysis, ecological-regression analysis, and ecological-inference analysis.
Dr. Handley concluded that with a 45% BVAP in District 11, African-American voters would have a realistic opportunity to elect their candidate of choice with a "comfortable margin."
5. Mr. William Cooper
William Cooper, a mapping consultant, testified as an expert witness at trial.
Mr. Cooper used census data and mapping software "to reexamine the plan that was adopted in 2012 and apply traditional redistricting principles to result in a map that was a little more fair for Democratic voters and at the same time visually more appealing" and also "undid ... [the] partisan *1047gerrymander."
Mr. Cooper explained the traditional redistricting factors that drove his maps and the manner in which those factors are measured. Equipopulation means that a district is the exact population of the ideal district size, plus or minus one.
Mr. Cooper defined a community of interest as "an area or a region where there are certain cultural or socioeconomic ties, historical ties."
Mr. Cooper also compared the shapes of several districts from the 2012 map to his Proposed Remedial Plan, commenting on the 2012 districts' irregular shapes and frequent splits of county lines and municipal boundaries.
Mr. Cooper's Proposed Remedial Plan was conscious of advancing minority voting power in various districts. First, it included a minority-opportunity district contained entirely within Cuyahoga County with a 47% BVAP, higher than the 45% that Dr. Handley calculated was necessary to allow minorities in the district to elect a candidate of their choice.
Mr. Cooper also responded to the report of Defendants' expert Dr. Hood.
D. Defendants' and Intervenors' Expert Witnesses
1. Dr. M.V. Hood III
Dr. M.V. Hood III, a tenured professor of political science at the University of Georgia, testified as an expert for Defendants at trial.
a. Incumbent pairing, core retention, compactness, and county and municipality splits
Dr. Hood's report stated that the 2012 map paired three sets of incumbents.
Dr. Hood compared the 2012 map with the 2002 map. He testified that the 2012 map was "on par with the 2002 plan in terms of compactness" measured with both the Polsby-Popper and Reock tests.
Dr. Hood also compared the 2002 map to Plaintiffs' Proposed Remedial Plan in terms of compactness and splits of communities of interest, defined here as counties and municipalities. He found that the Proposed Remedial Plan had "slightly higher" compactness scores than the 2002 map measured by both the Polsby-Popper and Reock tests. He also testified that Mr. Cooper's hypothetical plans, which were designed as alternatives that could have been enacted in 2012, also had higher compactness scores than the adopted 2012 map.
Dr. Hood also demonstrated that, had Plaintiffs' Proposed Remedial Plan been enacted in 2012, it would have resulted in the pairing of six sets of incumbents, the majority of which would have been Republican pairings.
b. Political geography
Dr. Hood also discussed Ohio's political geography-"the spatial distribution of partisans in Ohio."
Dr. Hood then calculated a Moran's I statistic to determine that from 2004 to 2010 "Republican VTDs tend[ed] to be located proximate to other Republican VTDs, and Democratic VTDs tend[ed] to be located proximate to other Democratic VTDs" in Ohio.
c. Partisan leanings
Dr. Hood then used his first partisan index to analyze the partisan leaning of Ohio's congressional districts as drawn under the 2012 map.
*1052Dr. Hood did the same analysis applying the partisan index to the Plaintiff's Proposed Remedial Plan and found that the only differences between it and the 2012 map were that under the Proposed Remedial Plan there would be "on[e] less safe Republican district and one additional competitive district leaning Democratic."
Dr. Hood created another partisan index using elections from 2012, 2014, and 2016, and then used the same process described earlier to color code the partisan leanings of VTDs on a map of Ohio.
Finally, Dr. Hood used this latter partisan index to evaluate the partisan leanings of each individual Plaintiff's new district under the Proposed Remedial Plan compared to the partisan leanings of their current district under the 2012 map.
d. Other influences on electoral success
Dr. Hood also testified about various factors that "influence the outcome of congressional races"-"[f]undraising, media attention, name recognition, incumbency," as well as "candidates and campaigns."
Dr. Hood also examined "the amount of campaign contributions that were collected by the Republican and Democrat" in each election because fundraising is helpful in winning elections.
e. Efficiency gap and seat-share relationship
Dr. Hood plotted the efficiency gap numbers for Ohio from 1992 to 2016 against the seat share of the congressional delegation.
2. Dr. Janet Thornton
Dr. Janet Thornton testified at trial for Defendants as an expert witness. Dr. Thornton is currently the managing director and an economist and applied statistician at Berkeley Research Group, LLC, a consulting firm located in Florida.
Dr. Thornton's report and testimony are offered to rebut Plaintiffs' experts Dr. Cho and Dr. Niven. As to Dr. Cho, Defendants presented Dr. Thornton's report and testimony to critique the underlying data and assumptions in Dr. Cho's report.
First , we give no weight to Dr. Thornton's finding that "Dr. Cho failed to provide all of the underlying code and output sufficient to replicate all of her findings."
Second , Dr. Thornton is an expert in statistics generally, not in political science or redistricting, and she has never run an MCMC algorithm or, prior to this case, reviewed, evaluated, or assessed an MCMC algorithm.
a. Rebuttal to Dr. Cho
Dr. Thornton opines that "the manner in which [Dr. Cho] generates new maps (i.e., simulations) is biased towards selecting half of the districts in which the Republican votes outnumber the Democratic votes and half of the districts in which Democratic votes outnumber the Republican votes."
In a similar manner, Dr. Thornton criticizes the election data that Dr. Cho used to assess the partisanship of the simulated maps as compared to the current map. This criticism, however, is distinct in an important way because it goes to Dr. Cho's after-the-fact assessment of partisanship and not the creation of the simulated maps. The general thrust of Dr. Thornton's critique on this front is that the 2008-2010 data used by Dr. Cho contains higher Democratic vote totals than in the 2012-2016 data.
We give some weight to this particular conclusion-Dr. Cho's omission of the 2016 election data (which was less favorable to the Democratic Party) and use of 2008-2010 data to assess the partisan effect of the 2012 plan raises some concern. At the same time, Dr. Thornton's critique on this point does not significantly undermine Dr. Cho's conclusions. After all, the 2008-2010 election data were part of the data available to the map drawers, so that data is not irrelevant to assessing whether different districts could have been drawn. It is true, however, that the Democratic vote shares have decreased in the present decade as compared to the last, and this waning in support is relevant to partisan effect. In response, Dr. Cho provided an updated analysis in her supplemental report that incorporated the 2012-2014 and 2018 election data; that analysis showed the most common Republican vote share as nine seats, and eight and ten Republican seats were also not uncommon. See supra Section II.C.2. This cures at least part of Dr. Thornton's critique, specifically that using the 2008-2010 data misleadingly resulted in eight Republican seats being most common. In any event, Dr. Cho's supplemental report further shows that incorporating *1056recent election data does not significantly alter her conclusions on partisan effect-a 12-4 map is still a highly unusual outlier under all her analyses. In sum, although we give some weight to Dr. Thornton's critique on Dr. Cho's selection and use of data, hence rendering Dr. Cho's findings less probative than they otherwise could be, we do not find that Dr. Thornton has significantly undermined Dr. Cho's conclusions.
Dr. Thornton also performed her own analysis using a binomial distribution, but we do not give any weight to that analysis. Dr. Thornton's analysis used the Republican statewide vote share in congressional races "to predict the number of Republican seats."
Several factual and legal problems are apparent in Dr. Thornton's analysis. Factually, under the binomial distribution, the expected number of Republican seats unquestionably reflects proportional representation-Dr. Thornton multiplied the statewide vote share by the number of seats. Legally, proportional representation is not required. See infra Section IV.B. For this reason, Dr. Cho does not assume proportional representation.
Additionally, Dr. Thornton applied a similar analysis comparing the difference between the number of Republican seats in 2010 and the number of Republican seats *1057in 2012.
Lastly, Dr. Thornton critiqued Dr. Cho for not considering incumbency in her analysis, and Dr. Thornton herself observed the success of incumbent candidates under the current map.
b. Rebuttal to Dr. Niven
Defendants also offered Dr. Thornton to rebut some of Dr. Niven's findings. According to Dr. Thornton, she performed analyses similar to Dr. Niven's but reached different results.
As an initial matter on this issue, we credit Dr. Niven's census tract analysis for a limited purpose. See supra Section II.C.3. Debates about the strength of various correlations aside, each expert's calculations are close to 50%, and both experts agree that split census tracts lean slightly Democratic. Moreover, Dr. Thornton's analysis is not entirely clear-she measured whether "the splitting of a census tract is correlated with the percentage Republican ...."
3. Dr. Thomas Brunell
Dr. Thomas Brunell testified at trial for the Intervenors as an expert witness. Dr. Brunell is a tenured professor of political science at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Dr. Brunell's report and testimony is offered to rebut Plaintiffs' experts Dr. Cho, Dr. Warshaw, Dr. Niven, Dr. Handley, and Mr. Cooper.
a. Rebuttal to Dr. Cho
Dr. Brunell questions whether Dr. Cho's simulated maps "serve as a good basis for comparison to the actual map."
Dr. Brunell incorrectly reads Dr. Cho's histograms to "suggest[ ] that there are just a handful of different maps in Prof. Cho's exercises, each with hundreds of thousands of repetitions."
Next, Dr. Brunell disagrees with Dr. Cho's conclusion that the current map is not responsive to voters. Instead, he "would characterize Prof. Cho [sic] simulated maps as hyper-responsive."
Lastly, Dr. Brunell misunderstands the point of Dr. Cho's individual Plaintiff-specific analyses. He takes issue with the fact that, because some Plaintiffs end up in the same district under Dr. Cho's simulated maps, "we cannot know what the partisanship of all 16 of the districts looks like" in the simulated maps.
b. Rebuttal to Dr. Warshaw
Dr. Brunell's critique of Dr. Warshaw's metrics focuses only on the efficiency gap. First, Dr. Brunell points out supposed issues with using actual congressional elections to calculate the efficiency gap, including uncontested elections and the variability of candidates.
c. Rebuttal to Dr. Niven
The thrust of Dr. Brunell's response to Dr. Niven is that "when electoral boundaries are being drawn some cities, counties, communities, neighborhoods have to be divided" and "[t]he boundaries have to go somewhere ...."
d. Rebuttal to Dr. Handley
Dr. Brunell's rebuttal to Dr. Handley does not contain any criticisms. His report simply states: "It is interesting to note that Dr. Handley recommended a majority African American district of over 61 percent BVAP in a recent lawsuit in Euclid, Ohio, which is in Cuyahoga County ...."
e. Rebuttal to Mr. Cooper
Likewise, Dr. Brunell's rebuttal to Mr. Cooper does not contain any helpful critiques. He simply concludes that "[i]t isn't clear why the policy decisions of Mr. Cooper are better for the citizens of Ohio than the combined policy preferences of the state legislature."
III. STANDING
Before turning to the merits of this case, we must address two threshold issues. First, we address Plaintiffs' standing to bring these claims. That is, are these the right Plaintiffs to bring these claims? Second, in the next Part, we will turn to the justiciability of partisan-gerrymandering claims. That is, are courts, rather than another branch of government, the proper forum to hear these claims?
To establish standing, Plaintiffs must show: (1) "an injury in fact"; (2) "a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of"; and (3) that it is "likely ... that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision." Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife ,
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that each individual Plaintiff and each organizational Plaintiff has standing to bring their district-specific vote-dilution claims. We further conclude that the individual Plaintiffs and organizational Plaintiffs have standing to bring their statewide First Amendment associational claim. Because Plaintiffs have standing for their claims that H.B. 369 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, they also have standing to pursue their claim that H.B. 369 exceeds the State's powers under Article I. Before turning to these standing analyses, we emphasize that just because Plaintiffs have suffered an "injury in fact" for standing purposes does not mean that they necessarily succeed on the merits; in other words, showing "a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy," Baker ,
A. Vote-Dilution Claims
To establish standing for their vote-dilution claims, the individual Plaintiffs must each establish that they live in an allegedly gerrymandered district just as in the racial-gerrymandering context. See Gill v. Whitford , --- U.S. ----,
1. District 1: Linda Goldenhar
Linda Goldenhar has lived at her current address and voted in District 1 for seventeen years.
Admissible evidence supports Goldenhar's contention that District 1 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 95.6% of them would have placed Plaintiff Goldenhar in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Goldenhar has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
2. District 2: Douglas Burks
Douglas Burks has lived at his current address and voted in District 2 since the enactment of the 2012 plan.
Admissible evidence supports Burks's contention that District 2 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 99.87% of them would have placed Plaintiff Burks in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Burks has standing for his vote-dilution claim.
3. District 3: Sarah Inskeep
Sarah Inskeep has lived at her current address and voted in District 3 since 2016.
Admissible evidence supports Inskeep's contention that District 3 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, none of them would have placed Plaintiff Inskeep in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Inskeep has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
4. District 4: Cynthia Libster
Cynthia Libster has lived at her current address and voted in District 4 for almost thirty years.
Admissible evidence supports Libster's contention that District 4 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 98.25% of them would have placed Plaintiff Libster in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Libster has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
5. District 5: Kathryn Deitsch
Kathryn Deitsch has lived in District 5 since 2013.
Admissible evidence supports Deitsch's contention that District 5 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 95.45% of them would have placed Plaintiff Deitsch in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Deitsch has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
6. District 6: LuAnn Boothe
LuAnn Boothe has lived at her current address for thirty-four years and voted in District 6 throughout the entirety of the current plan.
Admissible evidence supports Boothe's contention that District 6 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 100% of them would have placed Plaintiff Boothe in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Boothe has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
7. District 7: Mark Griffiths
Mark Griffiths has lived at his current address for almost sixteen years and has *1066voted in District 7 since the enactment of the 2012 plan.
Admissible evidence supports Griffiths's contention that District 7 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 100% of them would have placed Plaintiff Griffiths in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Griffiths has standing for his vote-dilution claim.
8. District 8: Lawrence Nadler
Lawrence Nadler has lived at his current address, located in District 8, for twenty-six years.
Admissible evidence supports Nadler's contention that District 8 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 100% of them would have placed Plaintiff Nadler in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Nadler has standing for his vote-dilution claim.
9. District 9: Tristan Rader and Chitra Walker
First, Tristan Rader has lived at his address since October 2013 and, after moving to his current address, has voted in District 9 in every election.
Admissible evidence supports Rader's contention that District 9 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 13.55% of them would have placed Plaintiff Rader in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Rader has standing for his vote-dilution claim.
Second, Chitra Walker also lives in District 9 and has lived at a few addresses throughout the district since 2008.
Admissible evidence supports Walker's contention that District 9 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 15.91% of them would have placed Plaintiff Walker in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Walker has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
10. District 10: Ria Megnin
Ria Megnin has lived at her current address and voted in District 10 since 2012.
Admissible evidence supports Megnin's contention that District 10 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 99.75% of them would have placed Plaintiff Megnin in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Megnin has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
11. District 11: Andrew Harris
Andrew Harris has lived in what is now District 11 since 1997 and been voting since he turned eighteen years old in 2008.
Admissible evidence supports Harris's contention that District 11 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, none of them would have placed Plaintiff Harris in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Harris has standing for his vote-dilution claim.
12. District 12: Aaron Dagres
Aaron Dagres has lived at his current address and voted in District 12 for about eight years.
Admissible evidence supports Dagres's contention that District 12 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 100% of them would have placed Plaintiff Dagres in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Dagres has standing for his vote-dilution claim.
*106913. District 13: Elizabeth Myer
Elizabeth Myer has lived at her current address, located in the current District 13, for over twenty years.
Admissible evidence supports Myer's contention that District 13 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, none of them would have placed Plaintiff Myer in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Myer has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
14. District 14: Beth Hutton
Beth Hutton has lived at her current address, located in District 14, for over thirty years.
Admissible evidence supports Hutton's contention that District 14 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 100% of them would have placed Plaintiff Hutton in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Hutton has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
15. District 15: Theresa Thobaben
Teresa Thobaben has lived at her current address, located in District 15, for *1070thirty-seven years.
Admissible evidence supports Thobaben's contention that District 15 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 79.28% of them would have placed Plaintiff Thobaben in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Thobaben has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
16. District 16: Constance Rubin
Constance Rubin has lived at and voted in District 16 for the past eight years.
Admissible evidence supports Rubin's contention that District 16 is gerrymandered. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that "[a]mong the set of simulated maps, 100% of them would have placed Plaintiff Rubin in a district that would have provided a higher likelihood of electing a Democrat."
For these reasons, and for the reasons below that apply to all Plaintiffs, we find that Plaintiff Rubin has standing for her vote-dilution claim.
17. Statewide Evidence of Injury in Fact and Causation
Statewide evidence bolsters each individual Plaintiff's contention that the current map was drawn with the predominant purpose of packing or cracking Democratic voters in each district and had that effect. As explained above, Dr. Warshaw employed four partisan-bias metrics to *1071measure the partisan advantage of the current plan: the efficiency gap, the mean-median gap, two partisan symmetry metrics, and declination.
The individual Plaintiffs present other evidence of causation as well. Dr. Cho's analysis shows that although "a 12-4 seat share [the outcome of every election under the 2012 plan] is possible, ... it is unusual given a map creation process that does not consider partisanship."
18. Redressability
Plaintiffs request injunctive relief that prohibits the State from conducting future elections under the current map. They further request that a non-gerrymandered map be implemented in its place.
*1072Clearly, the Court can enjoin future use of the 2012 map. Further, it is possible to enact a non-gerrymandered map for the upcoming election. The Proposed Remedial Plan offers just one possible example of such a non-gerrymandered map that could replace the current map.
19. Organizational Plaintiffs
"An association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members when its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right, the interests at stake are germane to the organization's purpose, and neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit." Common Cause v. Rucho ,
As discussed in the summaries of their testimony, Plaintiffs APRI and the League are both non-partisan organizations. APRI and the League aim to encourage voter engagement and effective and educated voting. The League has also made significant efforts to study and curb partisan gerrymandering, for example commissioning a study on the creation of the 2012 map.
Plaintiffs NEOYBD, HCYD, and OSU College Democrats are all partisan organizations composed of members who vote for Democratic candidates. All three organizations work to educate and mobilize voters to support Democratic candidates, among other things. NEOYBD's Democratic *1073members live in Districts 9, 11, 13, and 14. HCYD's Democratic members live in Districts 1 and 2. OSU College Democrats' members live in Districts 3, 12, and 15. Evidence was presented at trial supporting the conclusion that each of these districts was intentionally gerrymandered for partisan gain. See, e.g., supra Sections III.A.1-3, III.A.9, III.A.11-15.
As previously discussed in the context of the individual Plaintiffs, evidence of causation and redressability pertaining to each of these districts was also introduced at trial.
We therefore conclude that APRI, at minimum, has associational standing to bring Fourteenth and First Amendment vote-dilution claims on behalf of its members to challenge Districts 5 and 12 as partisan gerrymanders. We conclude that the League, at minimum, has associational standing to bring Fourteenth and First Amendment vote-dilution claims on behalf of Fitzpatrick to challenge District 14 as a partisan gerrymander. See Rucho ,
* * *
In sum, the individual Plaintiffs have presented enough evidence to show that they each have a personal stake in the case to satisfy standing requirements. There is some evidence that individual Plaintiffs actually live in packed or cracked districts and, consequently, they have suffered injuries in fact that are fairly traceable to the way in which the current map was drawn. Furthermore, the individual Plaintiffs have evidence of alternative maps, including the Proposed Remedial Plan and Dr. Cho's simulations, that show other possible districts exist in which the individual Plaintiffs' votes would not be diluted. The organizational Plaintiffs, for their part, represent members who, like the individual Plaintiffs, live in arguably packed and cracked districts. They have derivative standing to represent the interests of their members in a suit that is germane to their own interests and may rely on the same evidence of injury, causation, and redressability as do the individual Plaintiffs. Whether this evidence, along with Plaintiffs' other evidence, is enough to prove their claims on the merits will be addressed in Part V.
B. First Amendment Associational Claim
For Plaintiffs' First Amendment associational claim, statewide standing principles apply. To establish standing on this claim, the individual Plaintiffs must point to evidence of their membership in and activities supporting the Democratic Party; to establish an injury in fact, Plaintiffs must demonstrate that the gerrymandered map weakened their Party's ability to carry out its core functions and purposes. Importantly, the "[p]artisan-asymmetry *1074metrics such as the efficiency gap measure ... the effect that a gerrymander has on the fortunes of political parties." Gill ,
As a threshold matter, the individual Plaintiffs fit this bill. See supra Section II.A.1. These Plaintiffs engage in a variety of get-out-the-vote, party-mobilization, fundraising, and other campaign and political activities. See supra Section II.A.1. There is also no serious dispute that nothing about the current map categorically prohibits Plaintiffs from engaging in these activities. See Benson ,
Here, Plaintiffs have presented evidence of partisan asymmetry to establish both an injury in fact and causation. Dr. Warshaw's analysis of the partisan-bias metrics concludes that "Ohio's congressional districts are unresponsive to changes in voters' preferences" and that this "pro-Republican advantage in congressional elections in Ohio causes Democratic voters to be effectively shut out of the political process in Congress."
Lastly, as with their vote-dilution claims, the individual Plaintiffs satisfy redressability as well. See supra Section III.A.18. In particular, Mr. Cooper's comparison of election results between the current plan and the Proposed Remedial Plan shows better responsiveness and more competitive seats are possible with a different map.
"An organization suffers an injury in fact when its mission is 'perceptibly impaired' by the challenged action, which it may show through a 'demonstrable injury to the organization's activities' and a 'consequent drain on the organization's resources.' " League of Women Voters of Mich. v. Johnson ,
We conclude that APRI and the League have provided competent evidence to establish at least independent associational standing for their First Amendment associational claim based on the 2012 map's negative impact on their ability effectively to associate to advance their belief in active and informed voter participation in the democratic process. See Benson ,
With regard to the partisan organizational Plaintiffs, "[a]s Justice Kagan recognized in Gill , 'what is true for party members may be doubly true for party officials and triply true for the party itself *1076(or for related organizations).' " Rucho ,
C. Article I Claim
As we explained previously, a state necessarily exceeds its powers under Article I if it runs afoul of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Plaintiffs have standing to pursue their First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment claims. That is enough to establish that Plaintiffs have standing for their claim that the State has exceeded its powers under Article I.
IV. JUSTICIABILITY, THE POLITICAL QUESTION DOCTRINE, AND THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL COURTS IN REDISTRICTING
A. Justiciability and The Political Question Doctrine
The Supreme Court has recognized that partisan gerrymandering is incompatible with democratic principles. Ariz. State Legislature v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm'n , --- U.S. ----,
The Supreme Court has held that partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable. Davis v. Bandemer ,
In Bandemer , however, the Supreme Court did not "settle on a standard for what constitutes an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander." See Gill ,
In Baker v. Carr , the Supreme Court laid out six factors for determining whether an issue is a nonjusticiable a political question. See Baker ,
Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question.
Defendants make arguments on each factor. See Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 44-52). All the arguments go to essentially three points: (1) The states have authority over elections and redistricting, and courts should not second guess the states' political judgment; (2) To the extent problems exist, plaintiffs should seek a remedy from Congress (or the *1078states); and (3) Judicially manageable standards are lacking. As a threshold matter, we observe that federalism concerns and respect for state sovereignty are conspicuously absent from Baker v. Carr 's list of justiciability considerations and, again, the political question doctrine is centered on separation of powers between the judiciary and the federal political branches, Congress and the President. See Baker ,
Turning to Baker v. Carr 's first factor-a textual commitment of an issue to a political branch-we find this factor does not weigh against justiciability. Though the Vieth plurality did not rely on this factor in discussing whether partisan-gerrymandering claims are justiciable, see Vieth ,
Simply put, the Supreme Court explicitly rejected that argument in Wesberry ,
Moreover, as explained, evidence in this case shows that congressional staffers and the political arm of the Republican Party in Congress had a hand in drawing the challenged map. See supra Section I.A.3. In other words, not only is Congress unlikely to fix partisan gerrymandering, but evidence shows that Members of Congress, and their colleagues on congressional campaign committees, are part of the problem. See supra Section I.A.3.; see also SAMUEL ISSACHAROFF ET AL., THE LAW OF DEMOCRACY: LEGAL STRUCTURE OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS 682 (5th ed. 2016) (noting that "in the 2000 redistricting, several courts ... found that national party leaders in the United States House of Representatives played a central role in the redistricting process.... If Congress was originally envisioned as a detached, neutral umpire that might stand above partisan conflicts in the states, Congress is now a self-interested player in the partisan struggles over districting."). Accordingly, both parties in Congress benefit from partisan gerrymandering and appear to participate in the practice of partisan gerrymandering. Cf. ISSACHAROFF ET AL., THE LAW OF DEMOCRACY , supra at 682 ("[T]he fates of national political parties and state parties have, over time, become closely bound together .... Indeed ... some states were prompted to engage in re-redistricting in the middle of the [2000] decade, precisely because national party leaders in the United States House pressed for this."); Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 43) (stating that the map-drawing "process was also aided significantly by John Boehner, then-Speaker of the U.S. House"). The courts are the logical branch to turn to in the face of such legislative self-dealing, and in this case, judicially manageable standards also exist to adjudicate the issue presented.
As the four-justice plurality in Vieth saw it, the political question doctrine's second factor (an absence of judicially manageable standards) was at issue for partisan gerrymandering. See Vieth ,
*1080As another district court recently observed, "a majority of the Supreme Court never has found that a claim raised a nonjusticiable political question solely due to the alleged absence of a judicially manageable standard for adjudicating the claim." See Rucho ,
makes clear[ ] [that] the concept of a textual commitment to a coordinate political department is not completely separate from the concept of a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; the lack of judicially manageable standards may strengthen the conclusion that there is a textually demonstrable commitment to a coordinate branch.
Nixon v. United States ,
There are good reasons why the Supreme Court has not taken such an unprecedented step. As Justice Kennedy explained, "[r]elying on the distinction between a claim having or not having a workable standard of that sort involves ... proof of a categorical negative.... This is a difficult proposition to establish, for proving a negative is a challenge in any context." Vieth ,
Although the Supreme Court's precedent leaves "few clear landmarks for addressing" partisan gerrymandering, we can find some rough guidance in the summary provided in Gill . See
In the absence of clear direction from the Supreme Court, three-judge federal district court panels
B. Evidentiary Metrics and Statistics
Plaintiffs utilize several evidentiary metrics and Dr. Cho's computer-simulated maps, among other things, to help the Court decide the merits of the partisan-gerrymandering claims. Defendants argue that none of those evidentiary metrics offers an answer to when a map is unconstitutionally gerrymandered and that no expert has offered an opinion on that subject. This critique falls flat, and it is important to clarify and emphasize that the judicially manageable standards about which we are concerned for justiciability are legal standards . We set forth those legal standards in Part V of this opinion. The evidentiary metrics and simulated maps, however, are offered by a party to show that the legal standard is met. We apply these metrics, simulated maps, and other evidence to the justiciable legal standards, and we find that they prove the elements of the underlying claims. See infra Sections V.A.2., V.B., V.C.2. This practice is nothing new. Courts routinely utilize statistical analyses in other contexts, including the similar context of racial vote-dilution cases under the VRA. See, e.g. , Rural W. Tenn. African-Am. Affairs Council v. Sundquist ,
We find Rucho 's reasoning on this point persuasive and adopt it here. In Rucho , the three-judge district court ably surveyed caselaw in which the Supreme Court, as well as district courts, have "relied on statistical and social science analyses as evidence that a defendant violated a standard set forth in the Constitution or federal law." See
Courts should not simply accept or give the greatest amount of weight possible to social-science measures or theories. Of course, we still have the obligation to ensure that an expert's "testimony is based on sufficient facts or data," is "the product of reliable principles and methods," and that "the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case." See FED. R. EVID. 702 ; see also Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc. ,
After the benefit of hearing trial testimony from Plaintiffs' and Defendants' experts and Defendants' cross-examination, we find that Plaintiffs' evidence and experts are more persuasive. As detailed later, we find some evidence quite probative and other evidence less so, but, overall, the evidentiary metrics utilized by Plaintiffs provide strong support for their legal claims. In other words, the evidentiary metrics are strong evidence that voters were packed and cracked across the 2012 map. Dr. Warshaw also gave illustrative examples of when the metrics would be less probative of a partisan gerrymander, and therefore, he would not conclude that a plan was a partisan gerrymander.
To be sure, metrics based on a theory of proportional representation would not be legally relevant. See Vieth ,
In other areas of election law, several metrics comfortably coexist. See Nicholas Stephanopoulos & Eric McGhee, The Measure of a Metric: The Debate over Quantifying Partisan Gerrymandering , 70 STAN. L. REV. 1503, 1551-54 (2018). First, in malapportionment cases, the Supreme Court has cited a handful of measures (and sometimes multiple measures in the same case) for population deviation. See, e.g. , Karcher v. Daggett ,
The brunt of Defendants' argument against social-science measures seems focused on the efficiency gap. Dkt. 253 (Defs.' & Intervenors' PFOF at 106-13). But Plaintiffs do not offer the efficiency gap as the ultimate Rosetta Stone to decipher what is or is not an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. Rather, the efficiency gap is just one tool in the evidentiary toolbox. When it comes to malapportionment, racially polarized voting, and compactness, courts have not limited their toolbox, and we see no reason to limit it for partisan gerrymandering. To the contrary, that all the measures strongly point in the same direction gives us greater confidence in reaching a conclusion in this case. See Rucho ,
C. Pragmatic and Historical Considerations
We now turn to other relevant considerations for whether the federal courts ought to intervene to address partisan gerrymandering. Importantly, these considerations are absent from the list of considerations for determining whether an issue presents a nonjusticiable political question. Instead, these points are pragmatic or historical in nature, and they are worthy of response.
1. Courts are not picking political winners and losers
One concern about allowing courts to adjudicate partisan-gerrymandering claims is that the courts would be dictating political winners. Dkt. 136 (Defs.' Mot. for Summ. J. at 18). But, as mentioned, the core concern about partisan gerrymandering is that representatives choose their voters and not vice-versa-that is, when partisan gerrymandering amounts to a constitutional violation, the winners and losers are often already predetermined by those in power. Rather than dictating outcomes in these cases, courts are only fixing the process by which voters enact political change. See JOHN HART ELY, DEMOCRACY AND DISTRUST 102-03 (1980) (explaining that in our system of government "[m]alfunction occurs when ... the ins are choking off the channels of political change to ensure that they will stay in and the outs will stay out," and that judges "are conspicuously well situated" to correct such malfunction). If courts find a constitutional violation and fix it, then the voters pick the winners and losers in districts that adhere to the Constitution.
As we will explain further, the evidence in this record shows that, in fact, the party in power sought to lock in a 12-4 map, and, despite receiving a fluctuating percentage of the statewide vote, they were successful. Experience has shown that legislators are unlikely to act as neutral umpires in this context. Judges, however, play precisely that role. Rather than decide who wins an election in these cases, the courts' role is to ensure an even playing field, just as courts have done with other forms of gerrymandering.
*1086See Vieth ,
Furthermore, this non-intervention argument has its roots in reasoning from Colegrove . See
Given courts' now well-established involvement in redistricting, as well as other voting and elections matters, history has shown that Colegrove 's concerns have not carried the day. In Baker v. Carr , the Supreme Court relied not on political judgment, but on the "well developed and familiar" "standards under the Equal Protection Clause ... to determine ... that a discrimination reflects no policy, but simply arbitrary and capricious action." See Baker ,
The upshot is that, although the federal courts' role in redistricting may be an "unwelcome obligation," Connor v. Finch ,
2. Partisan gerrymandering is not a self-limiting enterprise
Experience has proven that the view that "political gerrymandering is a self-limiting enterprise" is incorrect. See Bandemer ,
In order to gerrymander, the legislative majority must weaken some of its safe seats, thus exposing its own incumbents to greater risks of defeat-risks they may refuse to accept past a certain point. Similarly, an overambitious gerrymander can lead to disaster for the legislative majority: because it has created more seats in which it hopes to win relatively narrow victories, the same swing in overall voting strength will tend to cost the legislative majority more and more seats as the gerrymander becomes more ambitious.
First, "technology makes today's gerrymandering altogether different from the crude linedrawing of the past. New redistricting software enables pinpoint precision in designing districts." Gill ,
Second, as technology has advanced, so too have methods for collecting data on voters. See David W. Nickerson & Todd Rogers, Political Campaigns and Big Data , 28 J. ECON. PERSP. 51 (2014) ("The techniques used as recently as a decade or two ago by political campaigns to predict the tendencies of citizens appear extremely rudimentary by current standards."). The improved efficiency of data collection and predictive methods "has led the political parties to engage in an arms race to leverage ever-growing volumes of data to create votes." Id. at 51. For example, political campaigns utilize state voter-registration databases that are supplemented with a variety of consumer data from commercial data brokers, and the need to store, manage, and analyze all this data has created "a new breed of political consulting firms ...." Ira S. Rubenstein, Voter Privacy in the Age of Big Data , 2014 WIS. L. REV. 861, 867-77 (2014). And "[i]n the 2012 election cycle, an emerging trend for these firms was the formation of new partnerships with online advertising firms that specialized *1088in tracking people on the web." Id. at 877. Moreover, although a voter's partisanship is not immutable per se, research has shown that, in fact, political affiliation is stable and predictable. See, e.g. , Corwin D. Smidt, Polarization and the Decline of the American Floating Voter , 61 AM. J. POL. SCI. 365 (2017) ("Greater clarity of party differences ... makes Americans less open to a change in their behavior and ultimately more reliable in which party they support across time."); DONALD GREEN ET AL., PARTISAN HEARTS AND MINDS 3, 11 (2002) (finding that, often, "sharp partisan differences eclipse corresponding sex, class, or religion effects" and that "partisanship tends to be stable among adults"). Voters, of course, think for themselves-the point is simply that, once voters adopt a particular political affiliation, their choice is fairly solidified and highly predictive of voting behavior. Accordingly, modern political parties and their map drawers utilize increasingly vast amounts of increasingly precise voter data.
These developments have allowed the political parties to achieve the maximum number of safe seats through a gerrymander, while simultaneously minimizing the risks of creating an "overambitious gerrymander." See Bandemer ,
3. Gerrymandering's long history
It is true that "[p]olitical gerrymanders are not new to the American scene," Vieth ,
At the outset, we note that gerrymandering's history during the Founding is somewhat distinct from the specific context of partisan gerrymandering, which, of course, requires parties. That is because "[t]he idea of political parties ... was famously anathema to the Framers, as it had long been in Western political thought." Daryl J. Levinson & Richard H. Pildes, Separation of Parties, Not Powers , 119 HARV. L. REV. 2312, 2320 (2006). Yet even though "the Framers had attempted to design a 'Constitution Against Parties,' " they almost immediately organized into two coalitions.
Although gerrymandering may have a long history in the United States, those close to the Founding strongly denounced the practice. After an 1812 Democratic-Republican gerrymander in Massachusetts, for example, the citizens in one county petitioned the legislature "to 'alter' the [redistricting] law which they characterized as 'unconstitutional, unequal, and unjust.' " ELMER C. GRIFFITH, THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE GERRYMANDER 71 (1907) (citation omitted). The Federalists viewed the gerrymander as "a blow at the constitution and a travesty upon the Bill of Rights when it allowed the minority to govern."
Criticism of gerrymandering persisted into the late-1800s. James Garfield, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, admitted that he benefitted from gerrymandering in Ohio. Then-Representative Garfield stated:
[N]o man, whatever his politics, can justly defend a system that may in theory, and frequently does in practice, produce results such as these.... There are about ten thousand Democratic voters in my district, and they have been voting there ... without any more hope of having a Representative on this floor than of having one in the Commons of Great Britain....
I think they ought to have more hope. The Democratic voters in the nineteenth district of Ohio ought not by any system to be absolutely and permanently disenfranchised.
41 CONG. GLOBE , 41st Cong., 2d Sess., 4737 (June 23, 1870) (statement of Rep. James A. Garfield). President Benjamin Harrison similarly criticized gerrymandering. In his Third Annual Message, President Harrison recognized that "the primary intent and effect of this form of political robbery have relation to the selection of members of the House of Representatives." President *1090Benjamin Harrison, Third Annual Message (Dec. 9 1891).
If I were called upon to declare wherein our chief national danger lies, I should say without hesitation in the overthrow of majority control by the suppression or perversion of the popular suffrage. That there is a real danger here all must agree; but the energies of those who see it have been chiefly expended in trying to fix responsibility upon the opposite party rather than in efforts to make such practices impossible by either party.
Significantly, in the late-nineteenth century, State Supreme Courts did not close their courthouse doors to challenges to gerrymandered maps. In Wisconsin, the State Supreme Court declared that the challenged "apportionment act violates and destroys one of the highest and most sacred rights and privileges of the people of this state, guarantied to them by the ordinance of 1787 and the constitution, and that is 'equal representation in the legislature.' " See State ex rel. Att'y Gen. v. Cunningham ,
If the remedy for these great public wrongs cannot be found in this court, it exists nowhere. It would be idle and useless to recommit such an apportionment to the voluntary action of the body that made it. But it is sufficient that these questions are judicial and not legislative. The legislature that passed the act is not assailed by this proceeding, nor is the constitutional province of that equal and co-ordinate department of the government invaded. The law itself is the only object of judicial inquiry, and its constitutionality is the only question to be decided.
Early gerrymanders often shared a notable attribute-the party in power drew maps in its favor with malapportioned districts. See, e.g. , GRIFFITH , supra at 8 ("A gerrymander is intended to disfranchise the majority or to secure [the majority] an influence disproportionate to its size."); see also id. at 72-73; ZAGARRI , supra at 115-16 ("No longer able to count on a statewide majority, [Federalists] supported a vastly inequitable districting plan designed to elect as many Federalists as possible. The first district, for example, was to contain approximately 30 percent more people than the third district and over 20 percent more than the second and fourth districts."). Of course, voters could not even challenge such districting schemes in federal court until the Supreme Court decided Gomillion and Baker v. Carr . And after the one-person, one-vote cases, legislatures' focus on gerrymandering shifted from malapportionment to other contexts, such as gerrymandering based solely on political affiliation. Accordingly, given that gerrymandering's constitutionality has been questioned essentially since its inception and that the federal courts have played a role in overseeing redistricting since Gomillion and Baker v. Carr , we do *1091not give great weight to the fact that "[p]olitical gerrymanders are not new to the American scene." See Vieth ,
Gerrymandering's history, however, provides greater clarity to the current problem. Historical examples of gerrymanders often involved "crude linedrawing." See Gill ,
4. Alternative state remedies
At one time, the Supreme Court "long resisted any role in overseeing the process by which States draw legislative districts. 'The remedy for unfairness in districting,' the Court once held, 'is to secure State legislatures that will apportion properly , or to invoke the ample powers of Congress.' " Evenwel v. Abbott , --- U.S. ----,
Today, we recognize that some states have adopted various approaches to attempt to curtail partisan gerrymandering. See, e.g. , Ariz. State Legislature ,
* * *
Finally, many of the same arguments that were lodged against judicial intervention in other forms of gerrymandering over fifty years ago are the same as those presented to us today:
We are told that the matter of apportioning representation in a state legislature is a complex and many-faceted one. We are advised that States can rationally consider factors other than population in apportioning legislative representation. We are admonished not to restrict the power of the States to impose differing views as to political philosophy on their citizens. We are cautioned about the dangers of entering into political thickets and mathematical quagmires.
Reynolds ,
As stated previously, in Vieth , four justices nonetheless thought that the Supreme Court's and the lower courts' inability to shape a substantive standard counseled against the justiciability of partisan-gerrymandering claims. Vieth ,
V. LEGAL STANDARDS AND APPLICATION
As a threshold matter, we conclude that the legal and evidentiary standards below shore up various deficiencies found by the Supreme Court in prior partisan-gerrymandering cases. First, our analysis is based on results across several election cycles, which shows that the current map's partisan effects are durable and largely impervious to fluctuations in voter preferences. See Gill ,
A. Equal Protection Vote-Dilution Claim
1. Legal standard
A state's partisan gerrymander violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when it "den[ies] to any person within [the State's] jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." U.S. CONST. amend. XIV. Partisan gerrymanders violate equal protection by electorally disadvantaging the supporters of the party that lacked control of the districting process because of their support of that party. See Rucho ,
We adopt the three-part test to prove a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause in a partisan-gerrymandering claim. Plaintiffs must prove (1) a discriminatory partisan intent in the drawing of each challenged district and (2) a discriminatory partisan effect on those allegedly gerrymandered districts' voters. Bandemer ,
a. Intent
To prove the first prong, Plaintiffs must demonstrate that those in charge of the redistricting "acted with an intent to 'subordinate adherents of one political party and entrench a rival party in power." Rucho ,
Plaintiffs argue that they must demonstrate only that partisan intent was a motivating factor for the redistricting scheme, not that it predominated over all other aims. See Dkt. 251 (Pls.' Post-Trial Br. at 31 n.8). Defendants do not engage in the debate on the proper level of intent. They disavow any accusation of partisan intent and claim that their main motivations in drawing the 2012 map were the protection of incumbents and a desire "to preserve and advance minority electoral prospects." See Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 4-27).
The Supreme Court has given conflicting indications of which level of intent plaintiffs must show in such a claim. Some cases suggest that partisan intent as a mere motivating factor is enough. For example, in Bandemer , the Court required political-gerrymandering plaintiffs to show "intentional discrimination against an identifiable political group," and did not specify that intentional discrimination must predominate over other aims. Bandemer ,
Other Supreme Court cases suggest that partisan intent must predominate over other goals in the redistricting. For example, Shaw racial-gerrymandering claims alleging violations of the Fourteenth Amendment require proof that "race was the predominant factor motivating the legislature's decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district." Miller ,
We observe that district courts have not uniformly adopted either the "motivating factor" or "predominant purpose" standard for intent in partisan-gerrymandering cases. Compare *1095Benson ,
In the absence of clear guidance from the Supreme Court and given the connections the Court has recently drawn in Gill between partisan- and racial-gerrymandering cases, we follow Benson and Rucho in electing the predominant-purpose standard. We note, however, that if Plaintiffs meet the predominant-purpose standard, they necessarily satisfy the motivating-factor standard as well.
Moreover, although courts have acknowledged that some partisan considerations are possible in the redistricting process, courts have recognized that partisan considerations are not included in the traditional redistricting principles. For example, excessive partisan considerations cannot serve as a justification for population deviations for state legislative redistricting plans, even when the population deviations are within the 10% safe harbor. See Larios v. Cox ,
Plaintiffs may prove discriminatory partisan intent using a combination of direct and indirect evidence because "invidious discriminatory purpose may often be inferred from the totality of the relevant facts." Rucho ,
Indirect evidence also includes statistical evidence that demonstrates "a clear pattern" of partisan bias that would be unlikely to occur without partisan intent or evidence that the supporters of one political party were consistently treated differently than the supporters of another. See
b. Effect
To prove the second prong, discriminatory effect, Plaintiffs must demonstrate that the plan had the effect of diluting the votes of members of the disfavored party by either packing or cracking voters into congressional districts. In Gill , the *1097Supreme Court noted that the harm of vote dilution "arises from the particular composition of the voter's own district, which causes his vote-having been packed or cracked-to carry less weight than it would carry in another, hypothetical district."
Plaintiffs may prove discriminatory effect by offering various types of evidence of packing and cracking. Statewide comparisons that demonstrate that the challenged map is an historical outlier in its extreme partisan bias, as measured through the efficiency gap and other related metrics, are indirect proof of packing and cracking. See Gill ,
Proof of discriminatory effect is bolstered by evidence showing that the partisan bias that the plan engendered was durable-the plan entrenched the favored party in power. See Ariz. State Legislature ,
c. Justification
Next, if Plaintiffs prove these first two prongs (discriminatory intent and discriminatory effect (i.e., packing and cracking) ), then the burden switches to Defendants to present evidence that legitimate legislative grounds provide a basis for the way in which each challenged district was drawn. Rucho ,
Defendants may also argue that some other non-partisan factor caused the map's partisan effects. Rucho ,
We then determine whether the State's proffered legitimate justifications or neutral explanations are credible based on the evidence presented at trial. See Rucho ,
2. Application
Plaintiffs have demonstrated predominant partisan intent and partisan effect to support their First and Fourteenth Amendment vote-dilution claims. We first discuss evidence that applies broadly across all districts and then delve into the particularities of each district. We next analyze the justifications that Defendants have offered addressing both the intent behind the map and its partisan effects. We conclude that the proffered justifications either are inconsistent with the evidence, simply not credible, or do not meaningfully explain the design or effects of the 2012 map.
a. Statewide evidence of intent
Several different types of evidence come together to tell a cohesive story of a map-drawing process dominated by partisan intent-the invidious desire to disadvantage Democratic voters and advantage Republican voters to achieve a map that was nearly certain consistently to elect twelve Republican Representatives and four Democratic Representatives. See Washington v. Davis ,
i. Map-drawing process
"Departures from the normal procedural sequence" may serve as proof "that improper purposes are playing a role" in the map drawers' work. Arlington Heights ,
There was a severe disconnect between the outward face of the map-drawing process and its true inner workings. Publicly, the House and Senate Subcommittees on Redistricting held regional hearings across Ohio ostensibly to solicit the input of Ohioans on the 2012 map. Yet, no draft maps were presented to the public at these meetings, and the public therefore could not even react to or comment on the drafts. In fact, State Senator Faber, the co-chairman of the Select Committee on *1100Redistricting, testified that "the Select Committee on Redistricting didn't do much with regard to the actual redistricting.... I'm not even sure we issued a report."
At the same time, in a room at the DoubleTree Hotel in Columbus, Republican map drawers worked on the map but declined to share drafts of it with the public, Democratic legislators, and most members of their own Party. They finally shared the map with other state legislators immediately prior to its introduction in the House. This late notice was in part necessitated by the fact that national Republicans such as Tom Whatman were requesting changes to the map as late as 9:28 PM on Monday, September 12, 2011, the evening before the bill was introduced.
The deep involvement of national Republican operatives in the map-drawing process is an additional irregularity that serves as evidence of partisan intent. Ohio Republicans were in contact with national Republican Party operatives well before the map-drawing process began. National Republicans instructed the Ohio map drawers to maintain the plan's secrecy, taught the Ohio map drawers how to use Maptitude, and provided them with additional partisan data and assistance in working with the data they were provided. National Republican operatives repeatedly met with Judy, Mann, and DiRossi, and were in regular communication with them during the map-drawing process.
Importantly, the national Republican operatives did not merely play a supporting role in the map drawing. Rather, they generated foundational strategies that played key roles in the map. For example, it was Tom Whatman's and Adam Kincaid's idea to create a new Democratic district in the Columbus area (District 3) in order to solidify Republican seats in Districts 12 and 15. Whatman also made the decision that the Republican incumbents to be paired were Congressmen Turner and Austria because that was "the right thing for Republicans for the next decade."
*1101ii. Heavy use of partisan data
Plaintiffs introduced testimonial evidence that the map drawers relied heavily on partisan data as they drew the 2012 map. We find the evidence of the heavy reliance on partisan data in the map-drawing process highly persuasive. See Benisek ,
First, partisan data, along with other demographic data, was constantly displayed on the map drawers' computer screens as they did their work on Maptitude. As they drew and altered congressional district lines, the partisan leanings of the resulting districts would automatically update in real time.
Second, the Republican map drawers created various partisan indices through which they could measure the likely partisan outcomes of their draft maps, and the compositions of the indices are themselves proof of the map drawers' partisan intent. The Unified Index, upon which they relied heavily, averaged the results of five races, overall reflecting a partisan landscape more favorable to the Democratic Party than an index that would have included a fuller set of elections from the decade preceding the redistricting.
Third, communications between the Ohio map drawers and their national Republican counterparts demonstrate that partisan outcomes were undoubtedly foremost in their minds when making line-drawing decisions. See Rucho ,
In the days leading up to the introduction of H.B. 319, DiRossi also sent Whatman an update about the effect that changes he had made to Congressman Stivers's district had on partisan scores. He sent Whatman an email in which the entirety of the message read: "Stivers 08 Pres goes from 52.64 to 53.32; Stivers unified index goes from 55.02 to 55.72; Schmidt 08 Pres goes from 54.62 to 53.99; [Schmidt] unified index goes from 57.64 to 56.96; I can send equivalency file if necessary."
The correspondence between these map drawers is also littered with references to "good" and "bad" territory as well as "improve[ments]" that can be made to certain districts. For example, Whatman wrote to Kincaid, DiRossi, and Mann that one set of changes "looks good on the surface" but highlighted that the "[k]ey is whether we can improve CD1 and CD 14 at the block level."
The Republican map drawers repeatedly emphasized in their testimony that partisan index data was only one category of the many types of demographic data that was displayed in Maptitude as they worked. However, while there is ample evidence that the map drawers were acutely aware of how their mapmaking decisions impacted the partisan leanings of their draft districts, no such evidence suggests that they were nearly as focused on any other type of demographic data. Further, the correspondence includes very little discussion of how contemplated changes would impact core preservation, affect compactness, or minimize county or municipality splits.
iii. Contemporaneous statements
Statements made by the map drawers during and immediately after the map-drawing process also reflect their intent to produce a 2012 map with specific partisan results. See Benisek ,
Kincaid's statements about the Ohio redistricting process following the passage of H.B. 369 provide further proof of the map drawers' partisan intent. In a presentation to the NRCC, he stated his belief that Districts 1, 12, and 15 had been taken "out of play"-they were safe Republican seats that had been designed with sufficient *1104partisan insulation from a Democratic challenge.
iv. Irregular shape of the districts, lack of compactness, high number of splits
A map that fails to include compact districts that follow preexisting county and municipal lines raises questions of intent. The choice to split counties and municipalities and to draw noncompact districts must have been motivated by some other intent that was more important to the map drawers than honoring these traditional districting principles. Where no other motivation is offered, or the motivation offered is unconvincing, and other evidence demonstrates that partisan intent was present, irregularly shaped, noncompact districts and seemingly unnecessary county and municipality splits can support an inference of partisan intent.
Comparing the 2012 map to Mr. Cooper's hypothetical maps (which dealt with the same incumbent-pairing situation as the map drawers in 2011 did) provides some proof of partisan intent. The 2012 map splits two counties four ways, five counties three ways, and sixteen counties two ways.
Further, it does not take an expert or scientific analysis to see that the 2012 map is littered with oddly-shaped districts. It is true that district lines must be drawn somewhere, but even a cursory glance at the 2012 map shows how non-compact some districts are. When coupled with all of the other evidence regarding intent, we find that the irregularity of the boundaries *1105is further evidence that the districts' boundaries were drawn with a predominantly partisan intent. See Rucho ,
v. Partisan effects as measured by evidentiary metrics
Plaintiffs argue that the extremity of the partisan effects themselves are strong proof of partisan intent. We find the inference of partisan intent well supported by Dr. Warshaw's analysis demonstrating the 2012 map's extreme levels of partisan bias across multiple metrics and data sets and when compared to a large array of historical elections.
b. Statewide evidence of effect
For their vote-dilution claims, Plaintiffs offer, in part, statewide evidence to prove partisan effect. As in other gerrymandering cases, "[v]oters, of course, can present statewide evidence in order to prove ... gerrymandering in a particular district." See Ala. Legislative Black Caucus ,
Before turning to this evidence, it is worth explaining that the reliance on statewide evidence in a partisan-gerrymandering case is slightly distinct from Shaw racial-gerrymandering cases. Of course, a Shaw claim does not have effect as an element. Rather, the harm under a Shaw claim is an "expressive" harm. See Richard H. Pildes & Richard H. Niemi, Expressive Harms , "Bizarre Districts," and Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw v. Reno , 92 MICH. L. REV. 483, 506-07 (1993) ("An expressive harm is one that results from the ideas or attitudes expressed through a governmental action, rather than from the more tangible or material consequences the action brings about."). As the Supreme Court recognized in Miller :
Shaw recognized a claim "analytically distinct" from a vote dilution claim. Whereas a vote dilution claim alleges that the State has enacted a particular voting scheme as a purposeful device "to minimize or cancel out the voting potential *1106of racial or ethnic minorities," an action disadvantaging voters of a particular race, the essence of the equal protection claim recognized in Shaw is that the State has used race as a basis for separating voters into districts .
Miller ,
Lastly, the evidence discussed in this section could also be used to prove intent. See infra Section V.C.1.b. In future cases, one would expect map drawers not to express clearly their pure partisan intentions, and there likely would be less clear direct evidence of partisan intent. The social-science metrics and simulated maps would then become even more important considerations, for evidence of sufficiently extreme partisan gerrymanders would support the contention that a state was predominantly motivated by partisanship. See infra Section V.C.1.b.
Turning now to the evidence, the actual election results show a durable partisan effect across the map and support an inference of packing and cracking districts across the State. Every election has resulted in the election of twelve Republican representatives and four Democratic representatives. Even more alarming is the fact that the Republican candidates have consistently won the exact same districts: Districts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 16; and the Democratic candidates have consistently won the exact same districts: Districts 3, 9, 11, and 13. Thus, in each of these elections, 75% of the representatives elected in the State of Ohio were Republicans-despite fluctuations in the Republican statewide vote share. In the 2012 election, Republicans won only 51% of the statewide vote. In 2014, they won only 59% of the statewide vote. In 2016, they won only 57% of the statewide vote. In 2018, they won only 52% of the statewide vote. From a statewide perspective, then, at least 2012 and 2018 were quite competitive. At the individual district level, however, only four congressional elections-two in 2012 and two in 2018-have been competitive (within a 10% margin of victory, or within 55% to 45%) across the entire decade. Each of those competitive elections was won by Republican candidates; meanwhile, the lowest percentage of the vote that a winning Democratic candidate for Congress received in any election was 61%. Because the scientific evidence shows that such clustering is not the result of natural packing, this strongly suggests that Democratic voters were intentionally packed in large numbers into these four districts. Under the 2002 map, there were several districts that bounced between electing Democratic and Republican representatives-particularly Districts 6, 15, 16, and 18.
Further, an array of social-science metrics demonstrates that the 2012 map's significant partisan bias in favor of Republicans in that the Republicans possess a major advantage in the translation of votes to seats compared to Democrats. This partisan bias is durable across the decade. In the 2012 and 2018 elections, the efficiency gap, declination, and partisan symmetry metrics were each more extreme and more pro-Republican than over 90% of previous elections. See supra Section II.C.1. The mean-median difference also displays significant partisan bias, though less so than the other three metrics: in 2012, the mean-median difference was more extreme than "in 83% of previous elections and more pro-Republican than ... in 92% of previous elections."
The lack of competitive elections compared to what one would expect based on Ohio's natural political geography also indicates that Democratic voters have been packed and cracked.
Moreover, we conclude that the districts are effectively entrenched to favor Republican candidates overall. We thus credit Dr. Warshaw's conclusion that "Democratic voters in Ohio are efficiently packed and cracked across districts."
Critically, the evidence shows that the map enacted in H.B. 369 is an outlier in terms of its partisan effects. Dr. Warshaw's findings on the pro-Republican tilt and extreme nature of the partisan-bias metrics provide considerable weight for this conclusion. Dr. Cho's seat-share analysis bolsters the fact that H.B. 369 is an outlier. In her initial analysis, none of the simulated maps produced the same 12-4 seat share as the current map; using updated data, only 0.046% of the simulated maps (1,445 out of over 3 million) produced the same 12-4 seat share. See supra Section II.C.2.b.iii. In this case, we are not confronted with a difficult question about the margins of what constitutes an outlier. By almost every measure, H.B. 369 has produced partisan effects that are more extreme than over 90% of prior elections, and several of the measures show that this map is over 95% more extreme.
Defendants contest the usefulness and appropriateness of Dr. Cho's simulated maps as a comparison to the current map because the simulated maps do not factor in incumbent protection. We find these arguments largely unpersuasive. To begin, the simulated maps incorporate only neutral districting criteria, and thus, they serve as useful non-partisan baselines against which to compare the current map's partisanship. In this case, these non-partisan baselines demonstrate the typical type of maps one would expect based on the State's natural political geography. Second, to the extent that the General Assembly legitimately sought to avoid the pairing of incumbents, we find that Dr. Cho's failure to account for this factor partially reduces the strength of her conclusion that the 12-4 map cannot be explained by legitimate redistricting criteria. Even so, we still find Dr. Cho's simulated maps to support an inference of partisan effect and intent due to the overbreadth of Defendants' incumbent-protection explanation, its shaky evidentiary foundation, and the sheer extremity of the pro-Republican or pro-Democratic leanings of the current districts, as demonstrated by Dr. Cho's comparison analysis. We fully address the incumbent-protection justification for H.B. 369 later in this opinion.
*1109As will be explained, we find that Defendants have stretched the incumbent-protection justification too far in this case, and, in some respects, the justification simply does not hold up based on the facts. We observe that Representative Huffman clearly described incumbent protection as "subservient" to other criteria. See Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 19) (statement of Rep. Huffman). Moreover, Dr. Cho's findings on her simulated maps' partisan outcomes so starkly contrast with the current map that, to the extent incumbent protection explains some of the current map's partisan effect, Dr. Cho's analyses provide support, along with other evidence in this case, that this justification cannot explain the consistent 12-4 seat share of the current map.
We now turn to an analysis of each individual district.
c. District-by-District analysis
In this section, we complement the statewide evidence of intent and effect with evidence specific to each district. We show that each district was drawn with a predominant intent to dilute the votes of Democrats and that each district actually dilutes the votes of Democrats by either packing or cracking Democrats into the district. In doing so, we address and reject herein some of the particular partisan-neutral explanations that Defendants offer for certain districts. In the next section, we explore more fully some of the overarching justifications that Defendants advance.
i. District 1
District 1 encompasses all of Warren County and irregularly shaped and disjointed portions of Hamilton County, including western portions of the City of Cincinnati. The district wraps strangely around the eastern portion of Cincinnati, surrounding it on three sides.
As Dr. Niven described, rather than leaving intact the City of Cincinnati, an obvious community of interest that leans Democratic, the map drawers made a deliberate choice to split the city in half in an *1110irregular shape. One half was paired with heavily Republican Warren County to make a Republican District 1. The other half was paired with Republican rural southern Ohio counties to make a Republican District 2.
It is true that Hamilton County has a population larger than the ideal equipopulous district and therefore cannot be entirely contained within a single district; the county must be divided to some extent.
We can discern no legitimate reason behind the division of the City of Cincinnati other than the desire to crack its Democratic voters, disabling a cohesive center that would likely have elected a Democratic representative and instead facilitating the creation of another Republican district. DiRossi testified that "[t]he intention [in 2011] was to try to have one whole county in [District 1] somehow."
We find this explanation for District 1's shape and the division of the City of Cincinnati entirely unconvincing, false, and indicative of partisan intent. In fact, DiRossi's explanation of the contours of District 1 provokes more questions than it answers.
*1111Why was Warren County, rather than Butler County or Clermont County selected as the county to pair with Hamilton County? Why was the intention to try to have one whole county in District 1? This did not appear to be a pressing concern elsewhere-Districts 13 and 9 are composed entirely of partial counties. Why did the map drawers want to have the west side of Hamilton County in the district, requiring them "to come across the northern area"? What was wrong with the east side? Most importantly, DiRossi's explanation of the shape of the district fails to explain why the City of Cincinnati was split as it is and why keeping Warren County whole was more important than preserving the obvious community of interest embodied in the City of Cincinnati. See Arlington Heights ,
Further, we conclude that the 2012 map did crack Democratic voters in Hamilton County in District 1. We first note that District 1 has elected Republican representatives in every election that followed the redistricting. This durability in and of itself is some evidence of cracking in District 1. See
Second, the partisan effects of District 1 were durable because the district was drawn in a way to ensure the election of a Republican representative. Evidence proves that entrenchment resulted in this case. In 2012, Republican Representative Steve Chabot was elected with 57.73% of the vote. In 2014, he won with 63.22% of the vote. In 2016, he won with 59.19% of the vote. In 2018, he won with 51.32% of the vote. Thus, only one of these elections was competitive-the last, which occurred during a significant Democratic swing election year. Democratic candidate Aftab Pureval challenged Representative Chabot in District 1 in 2018. Pureval spent $ 4,059,690.53 on his campaign while Representative Chabot only spent $ 2,991,573.88.
District 1's consistent election of a Republican Congressman under the 2012 plan stands in stark contrast to former District 1's status as a swing district under the 2002 plan. In 2006, District 1 elected Republican Representative Chabot, who won with 52.25% of the vote. In 2008, District 1 elected Democratic Representative Steve Driehaus with 52.47% of the vote. In 2010, District 1 flipped back to elect Republican Representative Chabot, this time winning by an even narrower margin with 51.49% of the vote. The 2012 map redrew District 1 in a fashion that diluted Democratic support by cracking the Democratic City of Cincinnati and paired those portions of Cincinnati with rural Republican strongholds, thereby eliminating the threat that District 1 would flip Democratic. See Benisek ,
Dr. Niven's report provides further proof of the cracking of District 1. It demonstrates the pronounced partisan divergence between Democratic Cincinnati and Republican Warren County, which combined with the cracked part of Cincinnati to form the new District 1.
Finally, Dr. Cho's report also serves as proof of a partisan effect of cracking in District 1. In 95.68% of Dr. Cho's simulated maps Plaintiff Linda Goldenhar, currently a voter in District 1, would reside in a district where she would have a better chance of electing a Democrat.
ii. District 2
District 2 encompasses part of Hamilton County, including highly irregularly shaped portions of the City of Cincinnati,
We also conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of cracking Democratic voters from the Cincinnati area in District 2. The historical election results are evidence of this cracking. See Benisek ,
Dr. Niven's report provides additional evidence that District 2 cracked voters from Hamilton County. Under the pre-2012 map, District 2 had been solidly Republican, with only 40.60% of voters supporting President Obama in the 2008 election. Had the same election occurred with District 2 as it is currently composed, 44.98% of voters would have supported President Obama.
Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide additional evidence of the cracking effect in District 2. 99.87% of Dr. Cho's non-partisan maps would have placed Plaintiff Burks, who lives in current District 2, in a district that would have had a better chance of electing a Democrat.
iii. District 3
District 3 encompasses an irregularly shaped portion of Franklin County, including portions of the City of Columbus.
First, the irregular shape of District 3 supports an inference of partisan intent. Mr. Cooper testified that the shape of the "[p]resent day District 3 is a mess," and we too find that the bizarre shape of the district is evidence of partisan intent.
We evaluate other explanations of the district put forth by Defendants and conclude that while each of these considerations may have played a role in the shaping of District 3, none was the primary force behind its creation. Rather, all other considerations were secondary to the predominant aim of packing Democratic voters into a highly saturated new Democratic district, thus allowing map drawers to shore up Republican advantage in Districts 12 and 15.
Defendants argue first that they created the new District 3 because of Columbus's growing population. It is true that Ohio's population was shifting and that the Columbus area was one of the few areas in the State that was experiencing population growth. On the one hand, without more, there is nothing inherently suspect or partisan about creating a new congressional district to encompass a coherent community of interest (the City of Columbus) in a growing population center. On the other hand, population growth in a metropolitan area does not necessitate the drawing of a new district around that area. We conclude, based on the evidence discussed above, that the reason the Republican map drawers chose to allocate Columbus's growing population to the new District 3 was because of the partisan advantage that strategy conferred to them.
Defendants next argue that District 3 "was drawn the way it was" because Speaker Batchelder's "relationship with Congresswoman Beatty and her husband Otto Beatty led him to have a priority to create a central district in Franklin County encompassing Columbus and having representation specifically for Congressman [sic] Joyce Beatty."
*1116The fact that Batchelder's relationship with the Beattys eventually led Republican map drawers to draw District 3 with Joyce Beatty in mind does not disturb our finding that partisan intent predominated in its creation.
Defendants also argue that District 3 was drawn to create a minority-opportunity district, but we do not find that this aim played a significant role in the creation of District 3. The Republican map drawers were simultaneously seriously considering an alternative plan to split Franklin County and Columbus into four congressional districts. Had Franklin County been split in four ways, the African-American voter population would have been split rather than included in a coherent minority-opportunity district. Despite now professing the creation of a minority-opportunity district as a motivation behind District 3's design, the evidence shows that the map drawers seriously considered adopting an alternative plan which would have undermined that very goal. We accordingly question the sincerity and veracity of this proffered justification. We further analyze this justification in conjunction with a similar justification offered for District 11 below, after considering each individual district. See infra Section V.A.2.d.iii. We note now, however, that a district could still have been drawn with a nearly identical BVAP,
Defendants argue that national Republicans advanced the idea for the four-way split of Columbus and that Ohio Republicans, who had different goals and intentions, firmly rejected that idea. That portrayal contradicts the evidence of the collaborative relationship between the national and state-level Republicans as well as the content of specific communications discussing the reason the four-way split, which would have resulted in 13-3 map, was rejected. It was the desire to "put the most number of seats in the safety zone given the political geography of the state, our media markets, and how best to allocate caucus resources" that led to the rejection of the four-way split idea.
In sum, even accepting all of Defendants' proffered justifications for drawing District 3, we conclude that they were secondary to the map drawers' predominant intent: conferring Republican advantage *1117by packing District 3 and facilitating the cracking of Districts 12 and 15.
We also conclude that District 3 actually packed Democratic voters. The historical election results provide proof of the packing effect-a Democratic candidate has won every election under the 2012 map. See Benisek ,
The margin by which that candidate has won shows that Democratic voters are packed into the district in a way that renders the district noncompetitive. In 2012, Democratic candidate Joyce Beatty was elected to Congress with 68.29% of the vote. In 2014, she won with 64.06% of the vote. In 2016, she won with 68.57% of the vote. In 2018, she won with 73.61% of the vote. None of these elections were even close to competitive; they were all landslide victories for Beatty. Beatty's consistent election also demonstrates the durability of the 2012 map's partisan effect in District 3.
Dr. Niven also demonstrated a stark difference in the political leanings of voters within Franklin County who were placed in District 3 and voters within Franklin County who were placed in Districts 12 and 15. Franklin County voters within District 3 had pro-Democratic partisan index score of .3268. Meanwhile, Franklin County voters within Districts 12 and 15 had pro-Republican partisan index scores of 0.5105 and 0.5237, respectively.
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps also provide proof of the packing effect in District 3. Zero percent of Dr. Cho's simulated maps would place Plaintiff Inskeep, a current resident of District 3, in a district where she would have a better chance of electing a Democratic representative.
iv. District 4
District 4 encompasses all of Allen, Auglaize, Shelby, Logan, Union, Champaign, Crawford, Seneca, and Sandusky Counties. It makes a small intrusion into Mercer County that is a part of a three-way split of Mercer County. Additionally, it is involved in the three-way split of Lorain County.
*1118The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to pack District 4. We also conclude that the 2012 map actually cracked Democratic voters in District 4. First, historical election results support this finding as District 4 has been won by a Republican in every election under the 2012 map. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide further evidence that District 4 was cracked. In 98.25% of Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps Plaintiff Libster, who lives in current District 4, would have had a better chance of electing a Democratic representative.
v. District 5
District 5 encompasses all of Williams, Fulton, Defiance, Henry, Paulding, Putnam, Hancock, Van Wert, Hardin, Wyandot, and Wood Counties. It also contains the northern half of Mercer County, the western half of Ottawa County, and the western half of Lucas County. It is involved in the three-way split of Mercer County.
*1119The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to pack District 5.
Additionally, we conclude that the 2012 map had a partisan effect on District 5 by cracking Democratic voters there. Historical election results provide support for this finding. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide further proof of the cracking of District 5. In 95.47% of Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps, Plaintiff Deitsch, who lives in current District 5, would have a better chance of electing a Democratic representative. That evidence supports an inference that the partisan manner in which District 5 was drawn had a negative effect on the ability of voters within the district such as Plaintiff Deitsch to elect Democratic representatives.
vi. District 6
District 6 includes territory along the southeastern border of Ohio. It encompasses all of Columbiana, Carroll, Jefferson, Harrison, Guernsey, Belmont, Monroe, Noble, Washington, Meigs, Gallia, Jackson, and Lawrence Counties. It also includes an irregularly shaped eastern half of Scioto County, the northern half of Muskingum County, the southern half of Tuscarawas County, the southern half of Mahoning County, and the southeast corner of Athens County.
*1120The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to crack District 6.
We also conclude that the 2012 map cracked voters in District 6. The historical electoral results since the enactment of the 2012 map provide support for this conclusion. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide further proof of cracking in District 6. In 100% of Dr. Cho's simulated maps, Plaintiff Boothe, a voter in current District 6, would have a better chance of electing a Democratic representative.
vii. District 7
District 7 encompasses all of Knox, Coshocton, Holmes, and Ashland Counties. It also includes the northern portion of Tuscarawas County, an irregularly shaped portion of Stark County, an irregularly shaped portion of Richland County, the southern portion of Huron County, and irregularly shaped portions of *1121Lorain and Medina Counties. It is involved in the three-way splits of Stark County and Lorain County.
The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to crack District 7.
Additionally, we conclude that the 2012 map cracked Democratic voters in District 7. The historical election results provide some evidence of the cracking. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps provide further evidence of the cracking of voters in District 7. In 100% of Dr. Cho's simulated maps Plaintiff Griffiths, who lives in current District 7, would have had a better chance of electing a Democratic representative.
viii. District 8
District 8 rests along the southwestern border of Ohio, with a portion jutting into the heart of the State. It includes the entireties of Darke, Miami, Clark, Preble, and Butler Counties and includes the southern half of Mercer County. It is involved in the three-way split of Mercer County.
*1122The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to crack District 8.
We also conclude that the 2012 map cracked Democratic voters in District 8. Historical election results under the 2012 map provide some proof of this cracking. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps provide further evidence of the cracking of Democratic voters in District 8. In 100% of Dr. Cho's simulated maps, Plaintiff Nadler, who resides in the current District 8, would have had a better opportunity to elect a Democratic representative.
ix. District 9
District 9 is a thin strip along the southern coast of Lake Erie, stretching from Toledo in Lucas County in the west to Cleveland in Cuyahoga County in the east. Its narrow, long footprint has earned it the nickname "the Snake on the Lake."
We conclude that the map drawers intentionally packed Democratic voters into District 9, splitting up communities of interest along the way. We agree with Mr. Cooper's analysis that District 9 severed communities of interest.
In concluding that the predominant intent behind the design of District 9 was partisan packing of Democratic voters, we reject Defendants' argument that bipartisan incumbent protection efforts and Democratic desires dictated its shape. There is no admissible record evidence suggesting that Democratic leaders desired the pairing of Representatives Kaptur and Kucinich. Representative Kaptur testified that she did not discover that she was being paired with Representative Kucinich until very close to the legislative introduction of the bill. She learned of the map's design from a newspaper and was "astonished" by the shape of her new district.
To the extent that Defendants claim that the shape of District 9 was preordained by the cluster of Democratic incumbent residences in northern Ohio, their argument is undermined by the evidence. Mr. Cooper, a redistricting expert, stated that "it made no sense to create a Snake on the Lake just to pair [Kaptur and Kucinich]. It just baffles me as to why that was done."
We also conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of packing Democratic voters in District 9. Historical election results support this conclusion. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps are further proof of this packing in District 9. Only 15.91% of the simulated maps would have given Plaintiff Walker a better chance of electing a Democratic representative. In 13.55% of the simulated maps, Plaintiff Rader would have had a better opportunity to elect a Democratic representative.
x. District 10
District 10 includes all of Montgomery and Greene Counties and the *1125northern half of Fayette County.
The overall evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to crack District 10.
We also conclude that the 2012 map cracked Democratic voters in District 10. Historical election results provide some proof of this cracking. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps provide further proof of the cracking in District 10. In 99.75% of Dr. Cho's simulated maps, Plaintiff Megnin, who lives in current District 10, would have had a better opportunity of electing a Democratic representative.
xi. District 11
District 11 includes highly irregularly shaped portions of Cuyahoga County and Summit County. It is involved in the four-way split of Summit County and the four-way split of Cuyahoga County.
*1126We conclude that District 11 was intentionally drawn both to pack voters into the district and to siphon Democratic voters off from the new District 16, in which Republican incumbent Representative Renacci and Democratic incumbent Representative Sutton were paired. District 11 was designed to absorb Democratic voters who were formerly Representative Sutton's constituents so that the new District 16 could be weighted to produce the victory of Republican Representative Renacci. See Benson ,
The decision to depart from District 11's historical territory and to drop down into Summit County and pick up additional Democratic voters from the City of Akron under the 2012 map is strong proof of the intent to pack District 11 and facilitate the cracking of District 16.
The historical election results in the years that followed the redistricting are proof of the map drawers' intent. Representative Fudge in the packed District 11 has won each election by huge margins. Her lowest portion of the vote in an election since the redistricting has been 79.45%. Meanwhile, in District 16, incumbent Republican Representative Renacci narrowly defeated incumbent Democratic *1127Representative Sutton in 2012. Once he had vanquished the opposing incumbent, Renacci proceeded to win his successive elections by large margins. See infra Section V.A.2.c.xvi. (discussing District 16). It was no coincidence that District 16 went Republican; the packing of District 11 facilitated the result. The day after the introduction of H.B. 319 in committee, Mann sent an email to Renacci informing him that, under the proposed bill, 16.98% of Representative Sutton's former district would be included within the new District 11, while only 25.79% of her former district would carry over into the new District 16, in which she was expected to run.
In concluding the intent to pack District 11 to dilute Democratic voting power predominated in crafting District 11, we reject or find secondary several alternative explanations for its shape. First, Defendants claim that District 11 was drawn by Republican map drawers with the intention of creating a majority-minority district. They argue that even if their implementation of this goal was flawed, so long as the map drawers honestly believed that the way in which they drew the district would aid minority electoral opportunity, they cannot be found at fault. See Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 21-22) (citing employment discrimination cases). There was no proof that such an extension of the District was made for any legitimate reason, and we reject Defendants' assertion that uninformed guesswork about VRA compliance is sufficient to justify the packing of African-American voters into a Democratic district. See infra Section V.A.2.d.iii. (discussing compliance with the VRA).
Second, no admissible evidence supports Defendants' assertion that Democratic leaders in the African-American community approved of and desired District 11's current shape. Defendants offered Judy, DiRossi, and Speaker Batchelder's testimony about conversations that allegedly occurred with African-American Democratic leaders solely for the effect that those conversations purportedly had on the map drawers. However, in the next breath, they offer the testimony about those conversations for their truth-to prove their assertion that the design of District 11 and its concentration of African-American voters and Democratic voters was a shared bipartisan goal. But this assertion relies on the truth of out-of-court statements of since deceased Democrats from Northern Ohio. The hearsay rules prevent us from taking Judy, DiRossi, and Speaker Batchelder's word for what those individuals actually wanted.
Third, we conclude that any input that Representative Fudge herself had on the shape of her district occurred well after the unveiling and passage of H.B. 319, in the scramble to secure Democratic support for a new bill that occurred in the shadow of the referendum. This input amounted to securing small tweaks and concessions, but the overarching contours of the map were already fixed and did not change. Fudge stated that she had no input in the drawing of her district's lines prior to the legislative unveiling and that she was quite displeased with the shape of the district and the way that it reached down into Summit County.
*1128Finally, we do not find that Defendants' argument that declining population in Northeastern Ohio necessitated stretching District 11 southward adequately explains the shape of District 11. There were myriad ways that these population constraints could have been handled. It is no coincidence that the way chosen by Republican map drawers resulted in packing Democratic voters in District 11 and cracking Democratic support for Representative Sutton in the new District 16. Mr. Cooper's alternative hypothetical maps also dealt with the population shifts in Ohio but managed to produce two different equipopulous versions of District 11 that do not extend the district south into Summit County.
We also conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of packing Democratic voters into District 11 in a dramatic fashion. Historical election results provide some proof of this packing. See Benisek ,
Dr. Niven's report helps illustrate why the addition of portions of Summit County to District 11 facilitated its packing. In the 2008 election 75.70% of the voters in Summit County who were included in District 11 voted for President Obama.
*1129Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide further evidence of packing in District 11. In 0% of the simulated non-partisan maps would Plaintiff Harris, who lives in current District 11, have a better chance of electing a Democratic candidate.
xii. District 12
District 12 includes all of Morrow, Delaware, and Licking Counties. It also includes the southern half of Muskingum County, the southeastern corner of Marion County, and the southern half of Richland County. Finally, District 12 includes irregularly shaped and noncontiguous portions of Franklin County, which jut into the City of Columbus.
The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to crack District 12. Additionally, the evidence of partisan intent in creating the "Franklin County Sinkhole" in District 3 is also evidence of partisan intent to crack District 12 because District 12 benefitted from the high concentration of Democratic voters in District 3. See Benson ,
*1130We also conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of cracking Democratic voters in District 12. Historical election results under the 2012 map support this conclusion. See Benisek ,
Dr. Niven's report provides further proof that the 2012 map shored up District 12 as a Republican seat. Under the pre-redistricting map, District 12 supported President Obama in the 2008 election with 55.03% of the vote. Had the District taken the form that it does under the current map, President Obama would have lost the district with only 45.43% of the vote.
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps also lend support to the conclusion that Democratic voters in District 12 were cracked. In 100% of Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps, Plaintiff Dagres, who resides in current District 12, would have a better chance of electing a Democratic representative.
xiii. District 13
District 13 includes the southern half of Trumbull County, the northern half of Mahoning County, and highly irregularly shaped portions of Portage and Summit Counties. In Summit County, the district includes much of the City of Akron. District 13 does not encompass the entirety of any one County. It is involved in the four-way split of Summit County and the three-way splits of Stark County and Portage County.
*1131The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to pack District 13. Further, the strange shape of District 13 under the 2012 map and the manner in which it splits many counties and the City of Akron support an inference of partisan intent.
We also conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of packing Democratic voters into District 13. Historical election results provide some evidence of the packing. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide additional evidence of the packing of District 13. In 0% of Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps would Plaintiff Myer, who lives in current District 13, have a better chance of electing a Democratic representative.
xiv. District 14
District 14 lies in the northeastern corner of Ohio. It includes the entirety of Ashtabula, Lake, and Geauga Counties. It also includes the northern portions of Trumbull and Portage Counties, the northeastern corner of Summit County, and an irregularly shaped section jutting into Cuyahoga County. It is involved in the three-way split of Portage County and the four-way splits of Summit and Cuyahoga Counties.
*1132The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to crack District 14.
We also conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of cracking Democratic voters in District 14. Historical election results provide some proof of the cracking. See Benisek ,
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide further evidence that Democratic voters were cracked in District 14. In 100% of her simulated non-partisan maps, Plaintiff Hutton, who lives in current District 14, would have a better chance to elect a Democratic representative.
xv. District 15
District 15 includes all of Morgan, Perry, Hocking, Vinton, Fairfield, Pickaway, Madison, and Clinton Counties, as well as the southern half of Fayette County, the northern half of Ross County, and most of Athens County. It also includes a highly irregularly-shaped portion of Franklin County, part of which includes pieces of the City of Columbus.
*1133The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of partisan intent to crack District 15. Additionally, the evidence of partisan intent specific to District 3 is also suggestive of partisan intent in the creation of District 15. District 3 was designed to efficiently pack voters to enable the reliable election of Republican representatives in Districts 12 and 15. See Benson ,
We also conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of cracking Democratic voters in District 15. Historical election results provide some proof of their cracking. See Benisek ,
This consistent, strong pro-Republican lean of the district contrasts with its pre-redistricting leanings, evidence that the 2012 map altered the configuration of District 15, making it more pro-Republican. Dr. Niven's report demonstrates that President Obama won the 2008 election in *1134District 15 with 54.61% of the vote. Had that election occurred with the new composition of District 15, however, President Obama would have lost the district with only 46.85% of the vote.
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide further proof of the cracking effect. In 79.28% of Dr. Cho's non-partisan simulated maps, Plaintiff Thobaben, who lives in current District 15, would have a better chance of electing a Democratic representative. This supports the conclusion that the partisan design of the 2012 map resulted in her decreased ability to elect a Democratic candidate.
xvi. District 16
District 16 includes all of Wayne County as well as irregularly shaped portions of Cuyahoga, Medina, Summit, and Portage Counties. It is involved in the four-way split of Summit County, the four-way split of Cuyahoga County, and the three-way splits of Stark County and Portage County.
The statewide evidence of partisan intent in the map-drawing process, discussed above, supports a finding of predominant partisan intent to crack District 16. Furthermore, District 16 intentionally cracked Democratic voters from Akron in order to enable Republican incumbent Representative *1135Renacci to win his pairing against Democratic incumbent Representative Sutton in the 2012 election. See Benson ,
We conclude that the 2012 map had the effect of cracking Democratic voters in District 16. Historical election results support this conclusion. In 2012, Republican Representative Jim Renacci defeated Democratic Representative Betty Sutton, winning a close race with 52.05% of the vote. In 2014, he won with 63.74% of the vote. In 2016, he won with 65.33% of the vote. In 2018, Anthony Gonzalez was the Republican candidate for Congress in District 16; he won with 56.73% of the vote. The only competitive election in this set of four elections following the 2012 redistricting was the first-in which two incumbents were paired. The uncompetitive elections and consistent election of the Republican candidate are also evidence of the durability of the 2012 map's partisan effects and its effectiveness in entrenching Republican representatives in office.
Furthermore, the Republican map drawers succeeded in their efforts to "eliminat[e] Ms. Sutton's seat"
Finally, Dr. Cho's simulated maps provide additional proof that the design of the 2012 map cracked Democratic voters in District 16. In 100% of Dr. Cho's simulated non-partisan maps Plaintiff Rubin, who lives in current District 16, would have a better opportunity to elect a Democratic representative.
d. Justification
Defendants tell an entirely different tale of the redistricting process, offering several justifications for the 2012 map, none of which includes the intent to lock in Republican advantage or dilute the voting power of Democratic voters through packing and cracking. Defendants argue that incumbent protection, bipartisan negotiations and input, Voting Rights Act compliance and advancing minority representation, and natural political geography explain the design and partisan effects of the 2012 map. We address and reject each justification in turn.
i. Incumbent protection and Gaffney v. Cummings
Defendants' arguments on their incumbent-protection and "bipartisanship" justifications seem to blend together at times. They contend that these arguments "find[ ] dispositive support in Gaffney v. Cummings ,
Because Defendants rely so heavily on Gaffney , we start with what that case actually *1136concerned-a so-called bipartisan gerrymander, or "sweetheart gerrymander." See Samuel Issacharoff, Gerrymandering and Political Cartels , 116 HARV. L. REV. 593, 628 (2002). In Gaffney , "[r]ather than focusing on party membership in the respective districts, the [State Apportionment] Board took into account the party voting results in the preceding three statewide elections, and, on that basis, created what was thought to be a proportionate number of Republican and Democratic legislative seats."
The Supreme Court, however, also reasoned that "[w]hat is done ... to achieve political ends or allocate political power[ ] is not wholly exempt from judicial scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment." Gaffney ,
To be sure, in 2010 the Republicans experienced a wave election and gained a thirteen-to-five advantage in the Ohio congressional delegation, but Democratic candidates still received approximately 42% of the vote. That was the Democrats' worst year in congressional elections in the prior decade. Even taking note of the strong Republican performance that year, the argument that allocating 25% of the congressional seats to Democrats fairly allocates political power in accordance with that Party's voting strength falls apart. Thus, Gaffney is far from dispositive, and we find it completely distinguishable from this case.
In fact, even despite their argument that Gaffney is dispositive, Defendants also admit that the State "focused on preserving the status quo incumbency-constituent relationship rather than on creating the 'proportional representation' sought in Gaffney ." See Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 6). First, this argument seems to contradict their initial argument about Gaffney . Second, Defendants basically admit that their goal was a 12-4 map. See id. at 8 ("Because of the pre-reapportionment 13-5 partisan split, divvying up the lost seats [after the census] fairly meant a 12-4 split."). They say that " Gaffney ratifies the legislature's choice ...." Id. at 7. For the reasons articulated above, we disagree.
At bottom, Defendants' arguments on this score are aimed at trying to justify entrenchment and incumbent insulation from political challenges, not incumbent protection as understood by Supreme Court precedent. See infra (collecting cases in which the Supreme Court has been skeptical of the argument of preserving the status quo for incumbents). Finally, we note that this present line of defense-that the primary goal of the map was to preserve the status quo for all incumbents-contradicts statements made by the redistricting plan's sponsor in the Ohio State House. Representative Huffman clearly described incumbent protection as "a subservient [goal] to the other ones that [he] listed" and further explained *1137that, "[n]obody has a district.... There's nobody that owns a piece of land in Congress. People elect them."
Legal arguments about Gaffney aside, by Defendants' account, protecting incumbents was the sine qua non of the map-drawing process, and the incumbent-protection concern was bipartisan in nature. Defendants' argument goes like this: the 2010 congressional election left Ohio with 13 Republican representatives and 5 Democratic Representatives. The decision to pair one set of Republican incumbents and one set of Democratic incumbents, a politically fair decision, would lead to a 12-4 map. The enacted map is a 12-4 map; ergo the redistricting process was fair. But this argument obscures complexities and nuances that significantly undermine Defendants' version of events.
First, to say that the redistricting process simply transformed a 13-5 map into a 12-4 map ignores two key considerations, which are intimately related with one another: competitiveness and responsiveness. Yes, the pre-redistricting map was a 13-5 map in that 13 Republican representatives and 5 Democratic representatives had been elected under it in 2010. But it had not consistently been a 13-5 map over the course of its life. It contained competitive districts and was responsive to shifts in voter preference and turnout over the years. In contrast, the 12-4 map created in the redistricting process is a 12-4 map through and through. It minimized competitive districts and responsiveness to changes in voter preferences. It is no coincidence that correspondence between the insiders crafting the map refer to "lock[ing] in" the 12-4 division and ensuring "safe seats." See Benisek ,
Second, the map drawers paired more sets of incumbents than Ohio's population stagnation required.
Third, Defendants repeatedly emphasize that the reason that incumbent protection is a legitimate motivation in redistricting is because incumbents, particularly those with considerable experience serving in their elected office, wield that seniority for the benefit of their constituents. Yet, the map drawers chose to pair two senior Republican incumbents, Representatives Turner and Austria, after considering and rejecting the possibility of pairing two freshmen Republican incumbents, Representatives Gibbs and Johnson.
A Gibbs/Johnson map results in 3 districts with a base Republican vote under 50 percent. A Turner/Austria map only has one district under 50.... Putting two members together in another region of the state merely because they are freshmen that results in an overall worse map for republicans in the state is simply not the right thing to do. Boehner is not happy about this but it is the tough decision that is the right thing for Republicans for the next decade.855
This correspondence demonstrates that when the map-drawing process pitted the competing concerns of incumbent-advantage protection against partisan-advantage protection, partisan-advantage protection dominated. The decision to pair senior Republican incumbents thus undermines the credibility of Defendants' assertion that incumbent protection was the primary consideration in the redistricting.
Fourth, Ohio Republican map drawers themselves claimed at the time that incumbent protection was not their primary concern. When presenting the bill in the Ohio House of Representatives, Representative Huffman detailed the competing concerns that the creators of the bill had considered when drafting the H.B. 319 map. He characterized equipopulation as "the lodestone," called VRA compliance an "important precept[ ]," and then listed "several other traditional redistricting principles ...: compactness, contiguity, preservation of political subdivisions, preservation of communities of interest, preservation of cores of prior districts, and protection of incumbents." He then made a point of stating that protection of incumbents was "subservient ... to the other ones that I *1139listed."
You know, we talked-a year ago someone came up to me and said, "Are we going to get rid of Kucinich's district?" And I said, "Look, Kucinich doesn't have a district. Nobody has a district. Every two years, there's an election, and that's how it works. That's how the system works. There's nobody that owns a piece of land in Congress. People elected them."857
We acknowledge that politicians may make representations on the floor of the House that diverge from the true account of their priorities in creating a bill. We must, however, note the tension between the post-hoc justification that Defendants offer for the bill-incumbent protection as the primary motivation-and Representative Huffman's express minimization of the incumbent-protection concern on the floor of the House.
Additionally, Defendants' portrayal of the incumbent-protection goal as bipartisan mischaracterizes the facts. Only hazy, inadmissible multi-level hearsay testimony was offered to support their claim that Democratic leaders wanted Kucinich and Kaptur to be the paired Democratic incumbents. The evidence indicates that the Republican and Democratic Caucuses did their map drawing entirely separately, particularly in the early stages when major decisions such as the pairing of incumbents were being made. Both Congresswoman Kaptur and Congresswoman Fudge insisted that they had no say whatsoever in the design of the map prior to its introduction as H.B. 319, and the incumbent pairings were not altered between H.B. 319 and the passage of H.B. 369.
Finally, we reject what seems to be Defendants' argument that because the Supreme Court has sanctioned incumbent protection as a legitimate concern in the redistricting process in some instances, any kind of incumbent-protecting behavior is legitimate and may be used to justify the drawing of district lines. The Supreme Court has expressed its acceptance of districting "that minimizes the number of contests between present incumbents," which in its view "does not in and of itself establish invidiousness." Burns v. Richardson ,
*1140We conclude that the incumbent protection effectuated by the 2012 map is of the latter, unprotected kind. The map drawers drew one more incumbent pairing than the bare minimum in a state that had its congressional delegation reduced by two. But the majority of its line-drawing decisions were motivated not by the legitimate incumbent-protection goal of "avoiding contests between incumbent Representatives," but rather by the goal of avoiding contests between Democrats and Republicans in general. The Republican map drawers drew noncompetitive, nonresponsive districts by grouping bodies of voters who would elect a Democrat-any Democrat-or a Republican-any Republican. This is not the incumbent protection that the Supreme Court has endorsed. In fact, the Supreme Court has repeatedly cast aspersions on this type of incumbent insulation. See Randall v. Sorrell ,
Furthermore, even if this kind of incumbent-insulation strategy were sanctioned by the Supreme Court's cases, the Republican map drawers did not create four Democratic districts because they had united in a bipartisan anti-competitive scheme with Democratic legislators. Rather, they created four Democratic districts because Ohio has Democratic voters and the map drawers had to allocate them in some fashion. The map drawers contemplated packing Democratic voters into three districts and cracking them among the remaining thirteen. The map drawers, however, did not feel that that strategy would guarantee sufficiently predictable pro-Republican outcomes; it allowed for too much competition and responsiveness. They decided twelve Republican seats in the hand was better than thirteen in the bush, and so four Democratic districts were born. This behavior constitutes invidious partisan gerrymandering and is unconstitutional as proved district by district.
ii. Bipartisan negotiations and input
Defendants also argue that some of the lines of the 2012 map resulted from honoring requests from Democratic representatives and operatives. We conclude that the Democrats had no role in the drawing of H.B. 319 and were able to secure only minor concessions from the Republicans in the passage of H.B. 369, none of which significantly changed the earlier version of *1141the map. These findings do not undermine our conclusion that invidious partisan intent predominated in the creation of the 2012 map. See Rucho ,
First, we assess Defendants' assertion that the map drawers were taking and incorporating requests from Democratic legislators prior to the introduction of H.B. 319. We do not credit this assertion. The map drawers themselves testified that they did not share draft maps of H.B. 319 with Democratic legislators or staffers until very close to its introduction in the General Assembly. Both Representatives Kaptur and Fudge testified that they did not have input into the design of H.B. 319. Finally, all Defendant testimony offered to prove that that Democratic leaders themselves actually wanted particular map designs was vague, unconvincing, and most importantly, hearsay. There is no evidence to support Defendants' assertions that, prior to the introduction of H.B. 319, certain Democrats actually made the requests that the map drawers say they eventually accommodated.
Second, we assess Defendants' assertion that the map drawers took and incorporated requests from Democratic legislators after the introduction of H.B. 319 and prior to the final enactment of H.B. 369. We credit this assertion, but it is not determinative. The changes made between H.B. 319 and the enacted H.B. 369 were de minimis. See Benisek ,
Next, Defendants assert that partisan intent to discriminate against Democratic voters could not have motivated the enactment of the 2012 map because Democratic members of the Ohio House of Representatives and State Senate voted in support of it. The argument is that Democratic legislators would not intend to electorally disadvantage their own party, and a bill enacted with their partial support could therefore not have been motivated by invidious partisan intent.
We do not find this argument convincing as it fails to acknowledge the reality of *1142legislative politics. The Republicans commanded majorities in the Ohio House of Representatives and the State Senate, and they held the governorship. They could force through a bill that Democratic legislators did not support. Speaker Batchelder himself acknowledged this, commenting that the Republicans "could have simply done what [they] wanted to," in the redistricting process.
Finally, Defendants' argument that the Republican map drawers could have drawn a 13-3 map but did not, and therefore that they did not have a partisan intent is unconvincing. Drawing a 13-3 map would have been a riskier choice because it would have required Republican support to be spread more thinly throughout the Republican-leaning districts. Such a map would have been more vulnerable in Democratic swing years; more seats could have potentially fallen into Democratic hands. The map drawers prioritized maximizing safe seats for their candidates throughout the decade over maximizing the number of seats in a single election, some of which would have then been vulnerable in Democratic swing years. Thus, rather than cut against partisan intent, this strategic choice is further evidence of the predominantly partisan intent. The Republicans successfully avoided the purported self-limitation on partisan gerrymandering-"an over ambitious gerrymander ...." See Bandemer ,
iii. Voting Rights Act compliance and advancing minority representation
Defendants assert that one "principal goal" was "to preserve and advance minority electoral prospects both in northeast Ohio and in Franklin County," Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 20), and that "the alleged [partisan] bias is justified by the Voting Rights Act and minority-protection goals ...." Id. at 30; see also id. at 20-27, 38-40. This proffered justification applies specifically to Districts 3 and 11.
Normally, invoking VRA compliance as a state interest in redistricting arises in the racial-gerrymandering context. See, e.g. , Cooper v. Harris , --- U.S. ----,
When a State invokes the VRA to justify race-based districting, it must show (to meet the "narrow tailoring" requirement) that it had "a strong basis in evidence" for concluding that the statute required its action. Or said otherwise, the State must establish that it had "good reasons" to think that it would transgress the Act if it did not draw race-based district lines. That "strong *1143basis" (or "good reasons") standard gives States "breathing room" to adopt reasonable compliance measures that may prove, in perfect hindsight, not to have been needed.
Cooper ,
To establish a vote-dilution claim under ยง 2, a party must satisfy three threshold conditions, known as the Gingles preconditions.
Although we do not find that racial considerations predominated, we nonetheless see it as entirely appropriate to put the burden on the State to show that it had good reasons for believing ยง 2 required drawing District 11 as a majority-minority district. As an initial matter, we would not engage in this inquiry if Plaintiffs had failed to carry their burden on partisan intent and effect, but Plaintiffs have carried that burden. Furthermore, Defendants' argument here essentially amounts to: "we interpreted the VRA and properly considered race (instead of partisanship); even if we were mistaken in our interpretation or mistaken about what BVAP was appropriate, a goal to aid minority electoral opportunities is still a legitimate justification for the design of District 11." For the reasons explained below, we do not find Defendants' argument persuasive. Moreover, although we acknowledge that some evidence suggests that the State had a good-faith belief that it drew districts in a way to comply with the VRA, other evidence cuts against finding a good-faith belief, and no evidence suggests that this belief was an informed one. First, we will address District 11, and then we will turn to District 3.
For District 11 (which was unchanged between H.B. 319 and H.B. 369), statements from the legislative record illuminate the General Assembly's thinking and its "legal mistake." See Cooper ,
*1144The significant application [of the VRA] in this particular case is that ... we are required to draw a majority/minority district in the State of Ohio when that can be done. And in fact, the map that you see before you today in this legislation ... does that. So that's one of the significant requirements by federal law that we have met when we've drawn this map.862
Likewise, in the State Senate, Senator Faber (the bill's sponsor in that chamber) stated that District 11 "was also going to be required to comply with the Voting Rights Act. And the Voting Rights Act says, essentially, where you can draw a continuity [sic] of interest minority district you need to do that."
As the Supreme Court explained, "[t]hat idea, though, is at war with our ยง 2 jurisprudence- Strickland included." Id. Instead, Strickland "turn[ed] on whether the first Gingles requirement can be satisfied when the minority group makes up less than 50 percent of the voting-age population in the potential election district."
In response, Defendants note that "[t]he legislature had good reasons to fear Voting Rights Act liability in northeast Ohio because the City of Euclid was the subject of successful Section 2 claims immediately prior to the redistricting, due to polarized voting in the city and its history of racial discrimination and animus." Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 38); see also, e.g. , City of Euclid ,
The cases concerning Euclid involved nonpartisan, local elections and do not support any suggestion that District 11's partisan, federal congressional elections were polarized. In fact, District 11 included the City of Euclid under the 2002 plan, and in the closest election under that plan (the 2002 election), then-Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones won by a margin of about 76% to 24%, or 116,590 votes to 36,146.
Plaintiffs present Dr. Handley's report as evidence affirmatively to rebut the contention that the third Gingles precondition could be met, and her analysis provides some further evidence against finding that the State had a good-faith belief that the VRA required District 11 to be drawn as it was. Dr. Handley's finding that a 45% BVAP would be sufficient to elect the Black-preferred candidate by a comfortable margin is merely additional evidence to support the conclusion that District 11 did not need to be drawn as a majority-minority district. (Dr. Handley even suggests a 40% BVAP may be sufficient, though the elections would be tighter.) We need not, however, rely on Dr. Handley. The real problem for the State is, again, that it drew District 11 based on a pure misinterpretation of the VRA. This means that it had neither "good reasons" nor any "basis in evidence" to draw District 11 as a majority-minority district. Cooper ,
To be sure, as with ยง 5 of the VRA, "[t]he law cannot insist that a state legislature, when redistricting, determine precisely what percent minority population ยง [2] demands." See Ala. Legislative Black Caucus ,
A question then arises as to whether a state's mistake of law on the VRA, even if in good faith, can serve as a legitimate justification for a partisan gerrymander. In the context of District 11, the argument essentially amounts to: The State can draw a majority-minority district if it wants, even if the State was mistaken in its belief that the VRA required such a district. Accepting such a justification could be constitutionally problematic. See Strickland ,
Importantly, we also conclude that Plaintiffs carried their burden in proving partisan intent, not a desire to comply with the VRA (even if based on an entirely mistaken interpretation of the VRA), predominantly influenced District 11. In Harris , the Supreme Court explained that the appellants in that case did not show that the districts "result[ed] from the predominance of ... illegitimate factors ...."
The argument for District 3 is slightly different, but the difference is important. In District 3, the argument goes, the State sought to advance minority electoral prospects in Franklin County. Defendants rely on Strickland 's statement about "the permissibility of [crossover districts that enhance a minority's electoral opportunities] as a matter of legislative choice or discretion." Strickland ,
The competing narrative, and the one that we consider more credible, is that Franklin County served as the center piece to help secure a 12-4 map in that Democratic voters could be packed into District 3 in order to shore up other neighboring districts for Republicans. Although some feedback throughout the map-drawing process included a desire for a minority-opportunity district in Franklin County,
We also note that District 3 could still have been drawn with a nearly identical BVAP,
Finally, although District 1 in Hamilton County is not central to the dispute of whether the map drawers were motivated by an intent to advance minority electoral opportunity in Districts 3 and 11, we find the treatment of that district instructive in evaluating claims about the map drawers' commitment to advancing minority representation. In evaluating a justification, we may look to see "the consistency with which the plan as a whole reflects [that] interest[ ]." Karcher ,
*1148decision to carve the City of Cincinnati in two resulted in a District 1 with a 21.30% BVAP.
iv. Natural political geography
Defendants also argue that some of the partisan effects that have resulted under the 2012 map are due to natural political geography-the way that the supporters of the two parties are distributed and clustered throughout the State. While we acknowledge that some credible evidence was presented at trial of partisan clustering in Ohio and a natural political geography that gives a slight advantage to the Republican Party, we find that Ohio's natural political geography in no way accounts for the extreme Republican advantage observed in the 2012 map. We therefore conclude that this justification fails as a neutral explanation for the 2012 map's partisan effects.
Dr. Hood's report and analysis demonstrated that in Ohio Democratic voters tend to cluster near other Democratic voters, and Republican voters tend to cluster near other Republican voters.
Dr. Hood's analysis also showed that in Ohio Democratic voters are more likely to be located in urban areas than Republican voters are.
Evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Ohio's natural political geography slightly favors the election of Republican representatives. Dr. Warshaw stated that "[p]artisan bias usually is caused by gerrymandering, but it could be caused by other *1149factors as well."
Dr. Warshaw expressed considerable doubt that the partisan bias observed in the 2012 map was the result of natural political geography or non-political factors, however. First, "the sharpness of the change in the efficiency gap between 2010 and 2012 makes it unlikely to have been caused by geographic changes or non-political factors."
Although Dr. Cho did not consider incumbent protection, Mr. Cooper created hypothetical alternative maps that did, and those maps score better on various traditional redistricting principles and result in a more responsive and competitive map. Mr. Cooper's hypothetical alternative maps pair the same number of incumbents as the current map, score higher on compactness, are equal to the current map on core retention, and split fewer municipalities and counties.
* * *
In sum, we conclude that (1) partisan discrimination against Democratic voters was the predominant intent in the creation of each congressional district in the 2012 map as well as the map as a whole, (2) the partisan effect of this discrimination was a dilution of Democratic votes, impinging on Democratic voters' Fourteenth Amendment rights, and (3) no legitimate justification offered by Defendants to explain either the intent behind the map or its partisan effects undermines our conclusion that invidious partisanship dominated the process and the result. We therefore conclude that Plaintiffs have proved their Fourteenth Amendment vote-dilution claims.
B. First Amendment Vote-Dilution Claim
Plaintiffs may prove their First Amendment vote-dilution claim by showing:
(1) that the challenged districting plan was intended to burden individuals or entities that support a disfavored candidate or political party, (2) that the districting plan in fact burdened the political speech or associational rights of such individuals or entities, and (3) that a causal relationship existed between the governmental actor's discriminatory motivation and the First Amendment burdens imposed by the districting plan.
Rucho ,
This test essentially mirrors the intent, effect, and lack-of-justification test that applies to the equal-protection claim analyzed above. The similarity between the elements of the two claims makes sense because the claims are theoretically and analytically linked-when the government purposefully dilutes an individual's vote (by packing or cracking voters into particular districts) in the partisan-gerrymandering context, it does so "because of the political views" expressed by voters. See Shapiro ,
For the reasons we outlined previously, we conclude that Plaintiffs have proved this vote-dilution claim. See supra Section V.A.2. The State relied predominantly on partisanship in drawing the current map and penalized Democratic voters because of their political viewpoint. In brief, the map drawers' controlling intent was to lock in a 12-4 map in favor of Republicans, that goal was accomplished, and no other causes or justifications explain the extreme partisan effects exhibited *1151by the current map. Therefore, in the context of partisan vote dilution under the First Amendment, the analysis is no different than vote dilution under the Equal Protection Clause.
The "associational harm of a partisan gerrymander," however, "is distinct from vote dilution." See Gill ,
C. Associational Claim
1. Legal standard
a. Background legal principles
The First Amendment protects the associational choices of voters. See Calif. Democratic Party ,
The associational rights of parties and their voters have been rightly recognized and protected by the courts, even though the Framers tried to design the Constitution against political parties. See Levinson & Pildes, supra at 2320. As the Supreme Court has acknowledged, "[r]epresentative democracy in any populous unit of governance is unimaginable without the ability of citizens to band together in promoting among the electorate candidates who espouse their political views." Calif. Democratic Party ,
"Although these rights of voters are fundamental, not all" state election laws "impose constitutionally suspect burdens on voters' rights to associate or to choose among candidates." Anderson ,
A court considering a challenge to a state election law must weigh "the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate" against "the *1152precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule," taking into consideration "the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights."
b. Partisan gerrymandering burdens associational and representational rights
In the context of partisan-gerrymandering cases, Justice Kennedy first recognized that the "allegations involve the First Amendment interest of not burdening or penalizing citizens because of their participation in the electoral process, their voting history, their association with a political party, or their expression of political views." Vieth ,
In Gill , four justices framed the associational harm as a burden on "the ability of like-minded people across the State to affiliate in a political party and carry out that organization's activities and objects." See Gill ,
If the whole point of partisan gerrymandering is to subordinate a disfavored group of voters and entrench the dominant party, then it is sensible to assess an alleged partisan gerrymander under an associational-rights framework and look at the plan as a whole. The ability of the people to associate through parties is critical to our representative democracy, Calif. Democratic Party ,
The First Amendment and the Anderson - Burdick standard are well suited to address these concerns in the partisan-gerrymandering context. This framework sensibly places the focus on a law's alleged "substantially unequal burdens" and effects, see Williams ,
Of course, to some extent, to the victor of an election go the spoils. But "[t]o the victor belong only those spoils that may be constitutionally obtained." Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill. ,
* * *
We conclude that the associational-rights framework provides a workable standard to evaluate an alleged partisan gerrymander. See Benson ,
2. Application
For the following reasons, we find that Plaintiffs have proved their associational-rights claim. Many of these facts overlap with our discussion of the vote-dilution claim. See, e.g., supra Section V.A.2.b. (discussing statewide evidence of effect). This makes sense given the overlap between individuals' right "to associate for the advancement of political beliefs" and *1155their right "to cast their votes effectively." See Williams ,
a. Burden
For a group of voters to associate effectively for the advancement of their political beliefs, the group must be able to mobilize in the electorate to have a real chance at translating their votes into electoral success. If a disfavored party's voters in the electorate are "deprived of their natural political strength by a partisan gerrymander" drawn by the dominant party in government, then the disfavored party may be sapped of its ability to mobilize effectively, win elections, and thereby accomplish its policy objectives. See Gill ,
The partisan-bias metrics employed by Plaintiffs show that the Democratic Party is placed "at an enduring electoral disadvantage," and the simulated maps indicate that Democratic voters are indeed "deprived of the[ ] natural political strength" that they otherwise would have based on political geography. See Gill ,
The lack of competitive elections supports the conclusion that Democratic voters' electoral opportunities are unfairly burdened. See Anderson ,
Of course, this is not to say that competitive elections must be maximized at the expense of other legitimate goals. The point is that the evidence indicates that in a State as competitive as Ohio, and considering its natural political geography, one would expect more competitive elections-some won by Democratic candidates, and others won by Republican candidates. The absence of competitive elections raises concerns that the dominant party in government, through partisan manipulation, is seeking to "dictate electoral outcomes" and "disfavor a class of candidates" and the voters who support them. See Thornton ,
The evidence of extreme partisan bias and lack of competitive elections are consistent with the intentions of the map drawers. As detailed previously, for a time, the map drawers considered splitting Franklin County into four districts, which might have secured a 13-3 map in favor of Republicans. See supra Section I.A.4. They abandoned this option because the margins of victory would have been tighter and thus exposed Republican incumbents to the risk of losing competitive elections. See supra Section I.A.4. Importantly, according *1157to talking points in an email from Heather Mann to Michael Lenzo, the 12-4 map "put the most number of seats in the safety zone given the political geography of the state, [the] media markets, and how to best allocate caucus resources."
When a partisan gerrymander maximizes the number of safe seats for the dominant party in government and, relatedly, packs as many of the disfavored party's voters into an optimal number of districts so that the dominant party's overall advantage is not at risk, there are consequences beyond entrenchment. An efficient partisan gerrymander can reduce campaign activity and expenditures and thereby inhibit "the constitutional interest of like-minded voters to gather in pursuit of common political ends ...." See Norman ,
Other evidence further demonstrates that the current redistricting plan limits Democratic voters' and organizations' "associational opportunities at the crucial juncture at which the appeal to common principles may be translated into concerted action, and hence to political power in the community." See Tashjian ,
The evidence presented by the individual and organizational Plaintiffs is consistent with the notion that a partisan gerrymander can have a demobilizing effect. A core concern with gerrymandering is that the party in power manipulates district lines to choose their preferred partisans and thereby render election results a foregone conclusion. Plaintiffs testified that they themselves have felt like election results were indeed preordained, that their candidate recruitment efforts have been *1158hindered, and that they have experienced fundraising difficulties. See supra Sections II.A.1.-2. In Hamilton County and on The Ohio State University's campus in particular, the HCYD's and OSU College Democrats' representatives testified that they have seen campaign signs for certain candidates in the wrong district and that people have been mistaken as to which district they should be voting in. See supra Section II.A.2. Dr. Niven also found that in Franklin County, the lines even caused problems for the professional election administrators keeping track of which voters should be assigned to which districts. See supra Section II.C.3.c. These mobilization difficulties are consistent with the social-science data outlined above that demonstrate an asymmetric burden in translating votes into seats. The actual election results compared to the statewide congressional vote share, the partisan-bias metrics, and the simulated maps all support a reasonable inference that Democratic voters and organizations, such as Plaintiffs in this case, would feel that they do not have a real chance at similar electoral success, even if their Party received a higher percentage of the vote. Even when the Democratic Party as a whole did better, the Republican advantage remained.
The remaining question is how much more successful the Democratic Party would need to be to turn the electoral tides in their favor. Again, Dr. Warshaw's initial findings were that, even with 55% of the statewide vote, Democratic candidates would win only 6 out of 16 seats.
The ultimate result of this substantial asymmetry is that Plaintiffs are hindered in their ability to mobilize effectively, win elections, and accomplish their policy objectives. These results come with representational costs. Dr. Warshaw's analysis demonstrates the growing polarization among Ohio's Republican and Democratic *1159Members of Congress.
In sum, the redistricting plan enacted in H.B. 369 burdens Plaintiffs' ability "to associate for the advancement of [their] political beliefs ... [and] to cast their votes effectively," Williams ,
b. State interests and justifications
To be sure, every redistricting law will have some effect on "the individual's right to vote and his right to associate with others for political ends." See Anderson ,
Because the burden on Plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights is substantial, the corresponding justifications must be "sufficiently weighty" to explain the burden. See Norman ,
We addressed Defendants' justifications above and explained that they simply do not hold water in the case before us. See supra Section V.A.2.d. We will nonetheless review these asserted State interests briefly.
i. Incumbent protection and bipartisanship
There is a line between "avoiding contests between incumbent Representatives," Karcher ,
Neither Article I nor Gaffney v. Cummings can save Defendants' arguments. First, the Elections Clause "act[s] as a safeguard against manipulation of electoral rules by politicians and factions in the States to entrench themselves or place their interests over those of the electorate." Ariz. State Legislature ,
Even if we viewed this incumbent-protection argument in the light most favorable to the State-that the State truly needed to draw the map the way it did to avoid contests between existing incumbents-we would not conclude that this justification holds up to scrutiny. Again, the sponsor of the initial H.B. 319 (to which H.B. 369 is materially identical) clearly described incumbent protection as "subservient" to other redistricting *1161goals.
The argument that the current map resulted from bipartisan input and negotiations, which at times blends with Defendants' arguments about incumbent protection and Gaffney , is also unpersuasive. See supra Section V.A.2.d.ii. The partisan outcomes of this map were locked in once the General Assembly passed H.B. 319, which was the work product of only Republicans. The General Assembly incorporated some minor Democratic requests into H.B. 369; however, Speaker Batchelder himself acknowledged that the partisan balance of the map was non-negotiable. See supra Section V.A.2.d.ii. Although Democratic legislators secured some small geographic concessions, the Republicans also secured their large 12-4 partisan advantage in H.B. 369. The material terms of negotiation were ultimately dictated by the fact that the Republican Party controlled both the General Assembly and the governorship. See, e.g. , Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 25) (stating that the Republicans "could have simply done what [they] wanted to" in the redistricting process). As a practical matter, Democratic legislators could not alter the expected partisan outcomes of this map, and, therefore, this justification does not cure the substantial burdens on Plaintiffs' rights.
ii. Voting Rights Act compliance and advancing representation
We accept that compliance with the VRA is a compelling State interest. See Bethune-Hill ,
The problem with this justification in this case is that the State had no basis in evidence to believe that District 11 needed to be drawn as it was. See supra Section V.A.2.d.iii. Instead, Ohio's belief that it was compelled to draw District 11 as a majority-minority district rested "on a pure error of law." See Cooper ,
Again, Defendants' asserted interest for District 3 is slightly distinct. For the sake of argument, we accept that the State may, as a matter of legislative discretion, rely on creating minority-opportunity or crossover districts as a legitimate justification. As explained previously, however, based on the evidence in this case, we credit the competing narrative for District 3: map drawers carefully packed Franklin County Democrats into District 3, facilitating the creation of two solidly Republican seats in Districts 12 and 15. This constellation of districts was key in their efforts to lock in a 12-4 map.
iii. Natural political geography
Finally, we also accept that a state's natural political geography could potentially explain partisan effects, but again, this justification does not hold up against the evidence in this case. See supra Section V.A.2.d.iv. Although Plaintiffs' experts acknowledge that Ohio's political geography provides a slight advantage to Republicans, the advantage is far from 12-4. First, the same geography did not cause such extreme bias under the prior redistricting plan, and under that plan, the State's congressional delegation majority shifted between Democrats and Republicans. See supra Section V.A.2.d.iv. Second, as mentioned above, the simulated maps provide a baseline to compare maps that incorporate only neutral districting criteria to H.B. 369. Dr. Cho's seat-share analysis demonstrates that a 9-7 map in favor of Republicans is the most common outcome, and one would expect at least a handful of competitive races. The current map has produced a combined total of only four competitive races across all four election cycles. When Dr. Cho incorporated 2018 data into her analysis, only 0.046% of over 3-million simulated maps produced a 12-4 outcome. If someone stated that they were flipping a fair coin but then that coin turned up tails in only 0.046% of 100,000 coin tosses, one would start to suspect that the coin was not, in fact, fair-here we have over 3 million coin tosses. Either the Republicans were exceedingly lucky, or their map drawers made exceedingly expert use of political data to manipulate district lines to secure the most seats and the least amount of competition possible. The evidence in this case points to the latter conclusion. Third, Mr. Cooper's hypothetical alternative maps pair the same number of incumbents as the current map, score higher on compactness, are equal to the current map on core retention, split fewer municipalities and counties, and produce more responsive and competitive elections.
* * *
We conclude that the burdens H.B. 369 imposes on Plaintiffs' associational rights are not outweighed by any of the asserted justifications. This redistricting plan substantially burdens the overlapping "right of individuals to associate for the advancement of their political beliefs[ ] and the right of qualified voters ... to cast their votes effectively." Williams ,
For these reasons, H.B. 369 is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
D. Article I Claim
Two provisions of Article I of the United States Constitution are relevant to this case-Article I, ยง 4 and Article I, ยง 2. As explained by the three-judge panel in Rucho , "the two provisions are closely intertwined."
Again, under Article I, ยง 4, states generally have the authority to draw district lines. U.S. CONST. art. I, ยง 4 ("The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections ... shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations ...."). And again, Defendants place too much weight on their argument that this clause immunizes the State's redistricting law from judicial scrutiny. "The power to regulate the time, place, and manner of elections does not justify, without more, the abridgment of fundamental rights, such as the right to vote, or ... the freedom of political association." Tashjian ,
Article I, ยง 2 provides: "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States ...." In the *1164original text of the Constitution, Article I, ยง 2 provided the people's sole right to choose directly their elected representatives; the electoral college elects the president, U.S. CONST. art. II, ยง 1, and, at that time, the state legislatures chose senators, U.S. CONST. art. I, ยง 3, amended by U.S. CONST. amend. XVII (providing the people with the right directly to elect their senators, as the people do today). Accordingly, in the original text of the Constitution, the members of the House of Representatives were the only elected federal officials directly responsive to the people. As James Madison emphasized, "the House of Representatives is so constituted as to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people." THE FEDERALIST NO. 57, at 511 (James Madison), reprinted in THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND SELECTED WRITINGS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS (2012).
This provision is referred to as "the Great Compromise," and the Supreme Court has held that "principle solemnly embodied in" that compromise-the one-person, one-vote equal-population requirement-would be defeated if "within the States, legislatures may draw the lines of congressional districts in such a way as to give some voters a greater voice in choosing a Congressman [or Congresswoman] than others." Wesberry ,
"To be sure, the Elections Clause grants to the States 'broad power' to prescribe the procedural mechanisms for holding congressional elections." Cook v. Gralike ,
We conclude that a state necessarily exceeds its authority under the Elections Clause if the State violates the First and/or Fourteenth Amendments, see Tashjian ,
As a general matter, then, Article I provides useful background principles for evaluating the problem of partisan gerrymandering. As a functional matter, however, the analysis under this claim is the same as the analysis under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. If a redistricting plan violates Article I, it does so because the plan unconstitutionally dilutes votes because of partisan affiliation or because the plan impermissibly infringes on the associational rights of voters. The one key caveat is that Article I, ยง 2 applies only to congressional elections. See U.S. CONST. art. I, ยง 2 ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States ....") (emphasis added). That specific section, therefore, would be inapplicable if a challenge to state legislative districts were before us (and there is no such challenge here).
For the reasons we have already articulated, see supra Sections V.A.-C., we find that H.B. 369 exceeds the State's powers under Article I.
VI. LACHES
The doctrine of laches "is rooted in the notion that those who sleep on their rights lose them." Libertarian Party of Ohio v. Husted , No. 2:13-cv-953,
As a preliminary point, we note that the nature of Plaintiffs' rights has been uncertain since the Vieth case. See Gill ,
Defendants contend that Plaintiffs' claims were ripe "shortly after" the State enacted the current plan. Dkt. 252 (Defs.' & Intervenors' Post-Trial Br. at 72). In Bandemer , however, the plurality found that "the plaintiffs had failed to make a sufficient showing on [partisan effect] because their evidence of unfavorable election results for Democrats was limited to a single election cycle." See Gill ,
Further, one clear concern in these cases is that judges should not undertake the "unwelcome obligation" of overseeing the redrawing of district lines unless it is necessary. See Connor ,
Defendants also rely on Benisek v. Lamone , --- U.S. ----,
In sum, we conclude that Plaintiffs' delay in this case was not unjustified or unreasonable. This alone disposes of Defendants' laches defense. Also important, the concerns present in Benisek v. Lamone are not present here.
We will nonetheless address Defendants' remaining arguments on prejudice, none of which we find persuasive. First, the "[u]navailability of important witnesses, dulling of memories of witnesses, and loss or destruction of relevant evidence all constitute prejudice." See Nartron Corp. v. STMicroelectronics, Inc. ,
Second, Defendants argue that "[v]oters are acclimated to the 2011 plan, and members of Congress have invested deeply in their districts." Id. at 74. The first point is unpersuasive because the map also imposes serious burdens on individuals' rights to vote and to associate. Similarly, for the second point, congressional representatives may have invested deeply in their districts, but they have no right to choose their voters, and representatives' interests are not implicated in this case-representatives answer to the voters, whose interests are implicated in this case. Thus, the fact that they have invested deeply in their districts is not a reason to find that laches applies.
Third, Defendants argue that the State has been forced "to litigate on an accelerated basis near the end of a redistricting cycle," which runs afoul of the "heavy presumption against last-minute changes to the electoral system." Id. Defendants again cite Benisek v. Lamone , which we addressed above, as well as Service Employees International Union Local 1 v. Husted ("SEIU Local 1 "),
*1168Lastly, even if a prima facie case for laches could be established, Plaintiffs can rebut a presumption that laches bars their claims by "establish[ing] that there was a good excuse for [the] delay ...." Nartron ,
For these reasons, we reject Defendants' laches defense.
VII. REMEDY AND ORDER
In their complaint, Plaintiffs request that we declare H.B. 369 unconstitutional, enjoin any future elections under the plan enacted in H.B. 369, and "[e]stablish a congressional districting plan that complies with the United States Constitution and all federal and state legal requirements, if the Ohio Legislature and/or Governor fail to enact a new and constitutional plan in a timely manner." See Dkt. 37 (Second Am. Compl. at 51-52). We have concluded that H.B. 369 is unconstitutional. Now we turn to the remedy.
Unless "an impending election is imminent and a State's election machinery is already in progress," a court should "tak[e] appropriate action to insure that no further elections are conducted under the invalid plan." See Reynolds ,
The parties have not yet fully briefed the issue of a remedial plan. As a general rule, however, when a federal court declares a redistricting plan unconstitutional, "it is ... appropriate, whenever practicable, to afford a reasonable opportunity for the legislature to meet constitutional requirements by adopting a substitute measure rather than for the federal court to devise and order into effect its own plan." See Wise v. Lipscomb ,
We advise that Defendants and Plaintiffs must be prepared to move forward on a remedial plan pursuant to the following timeline and conditions:
1. The State should enact forthwith its own remedial plan consistent with this opinion no later than June 14, 2019. No continuances will be granted. The date of enactment shall be the date on which the Governor signs the proposed remedial plan into law; or, if the Governor vetoes the proposed remedial plan, the date of enactment shall be the date on which the General Assembly overrides the Governor's veto.
2. On the same day that the State enacts its own remedial plan, Defendants shall provide notice of the plan's enactment to this Court and to Plaintiffs. No later than seven days from the date on which the State enacts its own remedial plan (assuming it enacts such a plan by the June 14 deadline), Defendants shall file the enacted remedial plan with this Court.
3. When Defendants file the State-enacted remedial plan with this Court, they shall also include:
(A) All transcripts of committee hearings and floor debates related to the State-enacted remedial plan;
(B) A description of the process that the General Assembly, and any constituent committees or members thereof, followed in drawing the State-enacted remedial plan, and Defendants shall disclose the identity of all participants involved in the process and map drawing;
(C) Data on the remedial plan's population deviation, compactness, municipality and county splits, and any incumbent pairings;
(D) Any alternative plans considered by the General Assembly or any constituent committee;
(E) All criteria, formal or informal, that were applied in drawing the State-enacted remedial plan, including, without limitation, any criteria related to race, partisanship, the use of political data, or the protection of incumbents, and a description of how the map drawers used any such criteria. If any of the criteria just listed were not used, Defendants shall so state.
4. If Plaintiffs believe that the State-enacted remedial map that the Defendants file is still unconstitutional, they *1170must file their specific objections to it no later than seven days from the date on which Defendants file the State-enacted remedial plan with this Court.
We will then assess whether the State-enacted remedial plan is constitutionally permissible.
If the State fails in its task to enact a remedial plan, we have our "own duty to cure illegally gerrymandered districts through an orderly process in advance of elections." See Covington ,
First, we may appoint a Special Master pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 53 to assist the Court in drawing a remedial plan. To that end, we hereby order the parties to confer and file no later than June 3, 2019 at 5 P.M., a list of no more than three qualified and mutually acceptable candidates to serve as a Special Master. We may then select a Special Master from that list and issue an order outlining the timeline and requirements that apply to the Special Master's submission of a proposed remedial plan. The parties would be allowed to comment on any proposal from a Special Master. In the event that the parties cannot agree on any candidates for Special Master, we may identify a Special Master without input from the parties.
Second, a situation could arise in which the State enacts a remedial plan, but we nonetheless find it constitutionally unacceptable. In this situation, the same procedures regarding the appointment of a Special Master would apply. If the State enacts a remedial plan that we reject, we will include in our opinion and order on that plan a timeline for the Special Master's submission of a remedial plan.
Finally, Mr. Cooper has submitted a Proposed Remedial Plan (and a corrected version thereof), as well as two hypothetical alternative plans that addressed the pairing of incumbents. Whether or not the State enacts a remedial plan that we consider, we hereby order the parties to brief whether one of Mr. Cooper's plans could or should be adopted as a remedial plan. The parties shall file these briefs simultaneously on June 3, 2019 at 5 P.M., along with the parties' list of mutually acceptable candidates for Special Master (if the parties have not yet filed that list by that date).
* * *
In conclusion, we GRANT Plaintiffs' request to declare the redistricting plan enacted in H.B. 369 unconstitutional. Moreover, we GRANT Plaintiffs' request for injunctive relief, and we hereby enjoin the State from conducting any elections using the plan enacted in H.B. 369 in any future congressional elections. Finally, we ORDER that the parties proceed according to the remedial schedule outlined above.
IT IS SO ORDERED .
Attachment
APPENDIX A *1171APPENDIX B *1172APPENDIX C
Notes
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 10).
Ohio Sec'y of State, 2010 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2010-elections-results/. The Court takes judicial notice of all the 2010 election results. Fed. R. Evid. 201.
Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. A., 1) (Joint Uncontroverted Facts).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 147-49).
Dkt. 230-14 (Glassburn Dep. at 37); Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 94-95, 103, 105).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 148-50).
Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 313).
Heather Mann is now Heather Blessing, but this opinion refers to her by the last name "Mann" because that was her name at the relevant time and to be consistent with how her name appears in documents and emails.
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 48).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 206-07).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 27-28).
Dkt 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 207-10); Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 28).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 35, 39, 41, 53, 56).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 48).
Trial Ex. P109 (DoubleTree Invoice at LWVOH_00018254); Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 144-45).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 212-13).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 63).
John Morgan instructed Mann, in person in Columbus, on how to use Maptitude.
Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 149).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 41).
A block equivalency or block assignment file "is a data set that shows which census blocks are assigned to which districts in a redistricting plan" and is "generated by Maptitude."
Dkt. 230-14 (Glassburn Dep. at 71-73).
Dkt. 230-7 (Braden Dep. at 17).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 46, 139-41).
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 71) (commenting that "Mann would ... be looking at past election results" because it was "her assignment, to try to come to districts that were friendly");
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 44, 75, 88, 91, 119); Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 113).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 222-24).
Trial Ex. P127 (Sept. 12, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018320) (relating partisan scores using the "08 Pres" index); Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 243).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 122).
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 22-25).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 84) ("We created a lot of spreadsheets with different data like set on population deviations, on absolute population, on indexes, on racial data, on voting data.");
Id. at 155-56.
Dkt. 230-34 (Morgan Dep. at 132); Trial Ex. P346 (Morgan 2010 Presentation at LENZO_0002550-75); Dkt. 230-29 (Lenzo Dep. at 99-106).
Dkt. 230-29 (Lenzo Dep. at 73, 76, 99).
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 41-42).
Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 271); Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 131); Trial Ex. P584 (Sept. 11, 2011 "Redistricting 'tweaks' " email at LWVOH_00018297) (President Niehaus stating that he was "still committed to ending up with a map that Speaker Boehner fully supports, with or without votes from two members of leadership").
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 27, 46-47).
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 29-30).
Id. at 31.
Id. at 30-31; Trial Ex. P128 (Sept. 12, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018322) (Kincaid sending last-minute changes in the map design to DiRossi, Mann, and Whatman); Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 276-77).
Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 273-74) ("As the redistricting coordinator in 2010 and 2011, my job was to facilitate the development of proposed maps with members of Congress, specifically in Ohio, so that they would have a proposal that they could bring back to the state legislators for their consideration."); Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 89-92, 94-97, 103-05).
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 55-56).
See Trial Ex. P124 (Sept. 10, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018310) (DiRossi implementing a last-minute change requested by Senator Faber, including its impact on partisan index scores, and stating that "DC is increasingly pushing to put the lid on this"); Trial Ex. P125 (Sept. 11, 2011 email at LWVOH_0001829) (Whatman apologizing to DiRossi for having to deal with a last-minute "tweak" request from Senators Faber and Widener); Trial Ex. P581 (Sept. 11, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018311) (DiRossi informing Whatman of the partisan index impact of accommodating Senator Widener's requested changes to the map and Whatman asking DiRossi if there was "some other change you guys wanted to run by me" because he "[g]ot that impression from [M]att's [voicemail]"); Trial Ex. P126 (Sept. 12, 2011 emails at LWVOH_00018298-301) (updating various map drawers of the impact that changes to the map had on the partisan index score of Representative Latta's district and noting that "a good part of Lucas [County] he is picking up is [R]epublican territory"); Trial Ex. P127 (Sept. 12, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018320) (DiRossi updating Whatman on the partisan impact of a map change on Representative Stivers's district as measured by two different partisan indices); Trial Ex. P128 (Sept. 12, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018322) (Kincaid sending last-minute changes in the map design to DiRossi, Mann, and Whatman); Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 260).
Trial Ex. P126 (Sept. 12, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018298) (Senate President Niehaus asking DiRossi: "Did Whatman sign off?" after changes were proposed and DiRossi confirming that Whatman signed off on them). Heather Mann testified that Whatman "never needed to approve of any maps" that she had drawn because "[h]e wasn't [her] principal." Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 59). However, the email correspondence between the Ohio map drawers reveals that although Mann may not have technically been required to secure Whatman's approval of changes to the map, such approval and input was regularly sought, particularly when such changes involved hot spots on the map that were especially important to the map's partisan outcome. See also Trial Ex. P581 (Sept. 11, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018311) (Whatman asking DiRossi if there was "some other change you guys wanted to run by me").
Speaker Batchelder testified that that decision was made "early on as we negotiated between the two caucuses." Dkt. 246 (Batchelder Trial Test. at 47).
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 35, 37-39).
Id. at 35-36.
Dkt. 246 (Batchelder Trial Test. at 48-49).
Dkt. 249 (Kaptur Trial Test. at 76). DiRossi testified that Representatives Kucinich and Kaptur were paired because "[t]here was a lot of-a lot of conversations that were happening, but it was very clear that the Democrats wanted Dennis Kucinich to be the one that was out ... I was getting feedback from a number of mechanisms, a number of people that were having conversations with the Democrats or with other party leaders.... I was talking to a number of people. I was talking to Bob Bennett, the former chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, who had been the chairman twice and had some incredible relationships with former Democratic chairs and also some of the county chairs and individual members." Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 159-60). DiRossi stated that Bob Bennett "then discuss[ed] these things with [him] personally" and "Bennett's conversations that he was relaying to [DiRossi] impact[ed] how [DiRossi] drew the lines." Id. at 160. Plaintiffs object to DiRossi's testimony regarding out-of-court statements, but the Court considers those statements only for the effect DiRossi claims they had on his map-drawing decisions and not for the purported truth of the assertions (i.e., which incumbents Democrats actually wanted paired).
Dkt. 249 (Kaptur Trial Test. at 69-70). Kincaid, however, testified that "Ms. Kaptur and Mr. Kucinich who had been drawn together in a district were interested in the makeup of their parts of those districts, specifically the DMA's which are the designated market areas of Toledo and Cleveland and how much of each was inside their districts-their district." Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 99). He testified that this information came from Congressman LaTourette's communications with Democratic representatives during the map-drawing process. Id. at 98. Again, the Court considers Kincaid's testimony only for the effect that Congresswoman Kaptur's and Congressman Kucinich's out-of-court statements had on the map drawers and not for the purported truth of the assertions.
Dkt. 249 (Kaptur Trial Test. at 70-71).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 176-77).
Dkt. 239 (Fudge Trial Test. at 83) (testifying that she "didn't have a role" in the 2011 redistricting). Kincaid testified, however, that "I know Congresswoman Fudge was interested in the precincts and communities that were included in her district .... Ms. Fudge wanted a district that ran from Cleveland to Akron." Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 99). Kincaid testified that his "understanding [was] that [Fudge's desire for such a district] was communicated multiple ways through multiple avenues" both "to the state legislature as well as to Mr. LaTourette." Id. at 100. He went on: "I recall that she probably stated she was thrilled by the district that was passed out of the Ohio legislature. She may not have used the word thrilled but that she was pleased with the district that she was drawn into." Id. at 100-01. Plaintiffs object to this testimony of the ground that it is inadmissible hearsay. Defendants contend that it is only being offered as evidence of Kincaid's understanding and belief. The Court sustains Plaintiffs' objection and finds that this testimony is being offered for the truth-to prove that Congresswoman Fudge was pleased with the district-and therefore is inadmissible hearsay. See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c)(2).
Dkt. 239 (Fudge Trial Test. at 84-85).
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 62); see also Trial Ex. P394 (discussing BVAP goals for District 11).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 7, fig. 2).
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 51); Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 333-37).
Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 121-22); id. at 420; Trial Ex. P077 (Ohio Changes Spreadsheet at BRADEN001387) (bearing the legend "Franklin County Sinkhole"). Defendants object to the admissibility of Trial Ex. P077 on authentication, foundation, and hearsay grounds. Each objection is overruled. First, the exhibit was produced by Braden in response to Plaintiffs' document subpoena, so it is presumptively authentic. Second, Plaintiffs have properly demonstrated foundation as Kincaid testified that he was the author of the spreadsheet and explained the spreadsheet in detail. Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 153); see also Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 363) (testifying that he "would have created the original version" of the spreadsheet, but he was unsure whether he had written the header reading "Franklin County Sinkhole"). Metadata further confirms that Kincaid was the last person to modify Trial Ex. P077. Third, the Court finds that Plaintiffs cite this document to demonstrate the map drawers' partisan intent, not for the truth that Franklin County was a "sinkhole." See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c)(2).
Kincaid sent the spreadsheet to DiRossi, Mann, and Whatman on September 2, 2011. Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 366-67); Trial Ex. P119 (at LWVOH_00018302). Mann forwarded the spreadsheet to Braden and Bensen on September 3, 2011. Trial Ex. P119 (at LWVOH_00018308). On September 6, 2011, Braden sent the spreadsheet to Hofeller in an email that stated: "please keep this secret but would like your and Dale's views." Trial Ex. P393 at REV_00023176-79. Dale Oldham worked as the redistricting counsel for the RNC. Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 55).
Kincaid testified that he had a memory of the term "Franklin County Sinkhole" "being used in a conversation with Mr. Whatman" prior to the introduction of H.B. 319, but he did not recall who was present or who used the phrase. Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 370-71).
Trial Ex. P499 (Ohio Changes Spreadsheet at REV_00023431) (reflecting a changed PVI score in District 12 from D+1 to R+8); Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 353-54).
Trial Ex. P313 (Ohio Changes Spreadsheet at NRCC000012) (listing the newly created district termed "10-open" with a PVI of D+15); Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 135-36); id. at 145; Trial Ex. P119 (Sept. 3, 2011 email at LWOV_00018302).
Trial Ex. P394 (Sept. 8, 2011 email at REV_00023234). Defendants object to Trial Ex. P394 as containing inadmissible hearsay. This objection is overruled. The Court finds that Plaintiffs have offered this document to show the map drawers' state of mind and partisan intent, not for the truth that these territories were "dog meat." See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c)(2).
Ohio Sec'y of State, 2012 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2012-elections-results/ (Democratic Representative Beatty winning District 3 with 68.29% of the vote and Republican Representatives Tiberi and Stivers winning Districts 12 and 15 with 63.47% and 61.56% of the vote, respectively); Ohio Sec'y of State, 2014 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2014-elections-results/ (Democratic Representative Beatty winning District 3 with 64.06% of the vote and Republican Representatives Tiberi and Stivers winning Districts 12 and 15 with 68.11% and 66.02% of the vote, respectively); Ohio Sec'y of State, 2016 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2016-official-elections-results/ (Democratic Representative Beatty winning District 3 with 68.57% of the vote and Republican Representatives Tiberi and Stivers winning Districts 12 and 15 with 66.55% and 66.16% of the vote, respectively); Ohio Sec'y of State, 2018 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2018-official-elections-results/ (Democratic Representative Beatty winning District 3 with 73.61% of the vote and Republican Representatives Balderson and Stivers winning Districts 12 and 15 with 51.42% and 58.33% of the vote, respectively). The Court takes judicial notice of all the 2012-2018 election results. Fed. R. Evid. 201.
Trial Ex. P385 (Congressional Redistricting Talking Points at LWVOH_0052438) ("Given the fact that the overall index for the State of Ohio is 49.5% on a measure of five recent races, it is a tall order to draw 13 'safe' seats. Speaker's [sic] Boehner's team worked on several concepts but this map is the one they felt put the most number of seats in the safety zone.").
Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 421).
Trial Ex. P078 (PVI Scores for the "4-Way Split as of September 6" map at OHCF0001438). Defendants object to the admissibility of Trial Ex. P078 on authentication, foundation, and hearsay grounds. Each objection is overruled. First, the exhibit was produced by Braden in response to Plaintiffs' document subpoena, so it is presumptively authentic. Second, Plaintiffs have properly demonstrated foundation as Kincaid testified that he likely authored the spreadsheet and explained the spreadsheet, including the meaning of "4-Way Split[,]" in detail. Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 381-82). Third, the Court finds that to the extent this evidence is offered to prove the intent and beliefs of the map drawers, it is not offered for the truth of the PVI scores. See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c)(2). To the extent that it is offered to prove the truth of the partisan leanings of the contemplated districts created by the four-way split, it is admissible as the admission of the agent of a party-opponent. See Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2)(D).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 246); Trial Ex. P581 (Sept. 11, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018311) (discussing the partisan consequences of Senator Widener's request); Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 244-45).
Trial Ex. P581 (Sept. 11, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018311); Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 247-48).
Kincaid, however, testified that Republican Congressman LaTourette "would meet with Democrat members of the Ohio [congressional] delegation and get their input on the Ohio congressional map and would communicate information back to them as well." Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 98). Kincaid's testimony is unclear as to when Congressman LaTourette's discussions with Democratic members of Congress occurred. Congresswoman Fudge testified that she spoke to Congressman LaTourette about the shape of her district after the introduction of H.B. 319 in the General Assembly. Dkt. 239 (Fudge Trial Test. at 100). Moreover, to the extent it is offered for the truth of what any particular Democrat wanted in the redistricting, it is based on hearsay.
Dkt. 230-19 (Huffman Dep. at 33-34, 45-46); Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 159-60).
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 57); Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 57).
Dkt. 230-13 (Faber Dep. at 57-58) (recalling seeing "the map for the first time at the same time that everyone else did" and "right before the weekend before we were going to vote it on the floor"); id. at 175 ("We were given at the last minute a map that we were being asked to support ... You know, we haven't had any input in this process per se.").
Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. A., 2) (Joint Uncontroverted Facts).
See Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 13-23) (statement of Rep. Huffman); Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 160-61).
Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 67-68) (statement of Rep. Budish).
Id. at 38-39 (statement of Rep. Gerberry); id. at 46 (statement of Rep. Letson).
Trial Ex. J07 (Ohio House of Representatives Journal, Sept. 15, 2011 at 12-13).
Trial Ex. J28 (Senate Government Oversight and Reform Committee File at 1, 4).
Trial Ex. J28 (Senate Government Oversight and Reform Committee File at 2); Trial Ex. J03 (Ohio Senate Session, Sept. 21, 2011 at 30-31) (statement of Sen. Faber).
Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. A., 2) (Joint Uncontroverted Facts).
Trial Ex. J03 (Ohio Senate Session, Sept. 21, 2011 at 32-33) (statement of Sen. Brown); id. at 53 (statement of Sen. Turner); Dkt. 240 (Turner Trial Test. at 9, 16-17).
Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. A., 2) (Joint Uncontroverted Facts).
Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. A., 3) (Joint Uncontroverted Facts).
See Ohio Rev. Code ยง 3513.05 ; Trial Ex. J03 (Ohio Senate Session, Sept. 21, 2011 at 15-16) (statement of Sen. Faber).
Dkt. 246 (Judy Trial Test. at 72-73); Trial Ex. J06 (Ohio House Session, Dec. 14, 2011 at 5) (statement of Rep. Huffman); Trial Ex. J05 (Ohio Senate Session, Dec. 14, 2011 at 7).
Trial Ex. J04 (Ohio House Session, Nov. 3, 2011 at 9-10) (statement of Rep. Huffman); Trial Ex. J22 (Rep. Huffman Sponsor Test. at 001).
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 120-21) (acknowledging that "negotiations began around mid to late October" and that "the referendum might have played some role in the negotiation about the second map"); Dkt. 246 (Judy Trial Test. at 78, 82) ("There were negotiations leading up to 369. This is after 319 was passed, and, due to the referendum, the confusion ... and the chaos and pressure that came out of the signature collections, negotiations began."); Dkt. 230-31 (McCarthy Dep. at 74) ("[T]here was a threat of a citizen's referendum on 319 and that-that was the primary reason [for H.B. 369]."); id. at 75-77.
Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 185) (stating that the Democratic feedback was "inherent in 369" because "the legislative Democrats approached the leadership and said this is what it's going to take for us to provide votes to approve this map, and so that was all post 319 and 369").
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 40) (identifying Bob Bennett's roles).
Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 184). DiRossi testified that he himself did not "have conversations directly with anyone who could be termed a Democrat" during that period. Id. Rather, he "was getting that information from other people." Id. He further stated that Bob Bennett "was an intermediary to Democrats and Republicans all over the state." Id. at 189.
Dkt. 246 (Judy Trial Test. at 78-79) (stating that Democratic members of the Ohio House of Representatives had "a small list of changes that they wanted to see" that were "given to the staffer or consultants that we hired on our side to incorporate in").
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 130-31); Dkt. 230-14 (Glassburn Dep. at 203-04); Dkt. 230-41 (Routt Dep. at 193-95).
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 115-16).
Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 48-49, 92).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 162). DiRossi testified that Bennett (who has since died), Niehaus, and Batchelder all informed him that such changes had to be made between the two iterations of the map. Id. at 162-63.
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 246). Even though Clark County was unified in the new map, the map drawers believed that they were able to do so while maintaining District 15's strong pro-Republican lean. Kincaid believed H.B. 369's PVI to be R+6. Trial Ex. P498 (H.B. 369 Partisan Data Spreadsheet at REV_00023430). He believed H.B. 319's PVI to be R+7. Trial Ex. P590 (Ohio Changes Spreadsheet).
Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. A., 3) (Joint Uncontroverted Facts).
Trial Ex. J04 (Ohio House Session, Nov. 3, 2011 at 9) (statement of Rep. Blessing).
See, e.g. , Trial Ex. J06 (Ohio House Session, Dec. 14, 2011 at 22-24) (statement of Rep. Ramos); id. at 28-29 (statement of Rep. Foley); id. at 33-35 (statement of Rep. Lundy); id. at 36-38 (statement of Rep. O'Brien).
Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. A., 3) (Joint Uncontroverted Facts).
Trial Ex. P042 (Comparison Spreadsheet); Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 91-92); Dkt. 246 (Judy Trial Test. at 83) (stating that the H.B. 369 as introduced and as passed "look substantially similar"). Representative Huffman stated: "This House Bill 369 retains the map that was presented to the Rules Committee six weeks ago, with one very minor change." Trial Ex. J06 (Ohio House Session, Dec. 14, 2011 at 5) (statement of Rep. Huffman). The "very minor change" appears to have been the accommodation of a request from the Democratic leadership in the Ohio House to draw former Democratic Representative Mary Jo Kilroy out of District 3 while not decreasing the African-American voting population of that district. Dkt. 230-5 (Mann Dep. at 171-72).
Dkt. 230-26 (Judy Dep. at 178).
Trial Ex. P498 (H.B. 369 Partisan Data Spreadsheet); Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 468-69). Defendants object to the admissibility of Trial Ex. P498 as containing inadmissible hearsay. This objection is overruled. The Court finds that the document is offered to demonstrate the intent, mindset, and belief of the map drawers and not being offered for the truth of the matter asserted-that these changes in PVI had occurred or that the districts were actually taken "out of play."
Trial Ex. P498 (H.B. 369 Partisan Data Spreadsheet).
Trial Ex. P310 (NRCC Presentation at 5); Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 115-16). Defendants object to the admission of Trial Ex. P310 on hearsay grounds. This objection is overruled. The Court finds that the document is admissible to prove Kincaid's intent, belief, and state of mind, not for the truth of the matter asserted-that the districts had actually been taken out of play. See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c)(2).
Trial Ex. P310 (NRCC Presentation at 6).
Trial Ex. P414 (State-by-State Redistricting Summary at REV_00000001); Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 519). Defendants object to the admission of Trial Ex. P414 on hearsay grounds. This objection is overruled. The Court finds that the document is admissible to prove Kincaid's intent and state of mind. See Fed. R. Evid. 801(c)(2).
Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 512-13).
Trial Ex. P556 (Stivers Email at STIVERS_007519); Dkt. 230-46 (Stivers Dep. at 77-78).
Trial Ex. P556 (Stivers Email at STIVERS_007519-20).
The Intervenors are the Republican Congressmen from Ohio, the Republican Party of Cuyahoga County, the Franklin County Republican Party, and four individuals. The four individuals are Robert Bodi, Roy Palmer III, Charles Drake, and Nathan Aichele, who live in District 16, District 9, District 11, and District 3, respectively. None of the Intervenors testified live at trial. Only Representatives Chabot, Johnson, Jordan, and Stivers testified via deposition. See Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at App. P.). For the purposes of this opinion, we generally refer to Defendants and Intervenors collectively as "Defendants," reflecting their collaborative efforts in litigating the case.
Representative Householder became the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives on January 7, 2019, and Mr. LaRose became Ohio's Secretary of State on January 12, 2019. Householder was substituted for Ryan Smith as a Defendant, and LaRose was substituted for Jon Husted as a Defendant. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(d) ; see also Dkt. 218.
The parties offer some of their witnesses' testimony via their depositions. See Dkt. 234 (Final Pretrial Order at 7, Apps. O. & P.).
The parties raised hundreds of objections to evidence in this case. The Court has considered objections lodged against any piece of evidence ultimately cited in this opinion. To the extent the Court relies on any piece of evidence, objections against the same are OVERRULED . The Court offers a more detailed explanation for several particular evidentiary rulings throughout the opinion.
Plaintiffs collect the trial and deposition testimony to this effect in their Proposed Findings of Fact ("PFOF"). In many instances, Defendants at least acknowledge that the individual Plaintiffs are politically active in support of the Democratic Party. See generally Dkt. 251 (Pls.' PFOF at ยถยถ 313-14, 324-27, 334-37, 350, 363, 373, 389-97, 419-20, 432-46, 459-66, 478, 489-90, 512-15, 529-30, 546-48. 550, 556-57, 570-72); Dkt. 253 (Defs.' & Intervenors' PFOF at ยถยถ 1139, 1149, 1152-53, 1170, 1174, 1230-37, 1267, 1289, 1292, 1302, 1305-08, 1329, 1380, 1382). To the extent that Defendants contest the veracity of Plaintiffs' support of the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates, we find Plaintiffs' testimony credible and that the overwhelming weight of the evidence shows that the individual Plaintiffs consistently vote for and politically support the Democratic Party.
See Dkt. 230-15 (Goldenhar Dep. at 26-27); Dkt. 239 (Burks Trial Test. at 231-32, 235); Dkt. 230-21 (Inskeep Dep. at 88-89); Dkt. 230-30 (Libster Dep. at 39, 60, 62-63, 75-76); Dkt. 230-11 (Deitsch Dep. at 48, 90-91); Dkt. 230-6 (Boothe Dep. at 51-52, 88); Dkt. 240 (Griffiths Trial Test. at 51-53); Dkt. 230-36 (Nadler Dep. at 27-28, 91); Dkt. 230-40 (Rader Dep. at 121-23); Dkt. 230-50 (Walker Dep. at 45, 87, 91); Dkt. 230-32 (Megnin Dep. at, 88-89, 106); Dkt. 240 (Dagres Trial Test. at 97-98); Dkt. 240 (Myer Trial Test. at 119-21); Dkt. 230-20 (Hutton Dep. at 46-47); Dkt. 230-48 (Thobaben Dep. at 46-47); Dkt. 230-42 (Rubin Dep. at 40-41, 78).
To clarify, nothing about H.B. 369 categorically prohibits Plaintiffs from engaging in these activities. The point is simply that Plaintiffs are, in fact, politically engaged individuals who support the Democratic Party in its effort to elect candidates.
Dkt. 239 (Washington Trial Test. at 44).
Id. at 55-56.
Id. at 54; Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl.).
Dkt. 239 (Washington Trial Test. at 45).
Id. at 46, 52.
Id. at 48-50.
Id. at 48, 52.
Id. at 61-62.
Id. at 52.
Id. at 52-53.
Dkt. 239 (White Trial Test. at 111).
Id. at 109-10.
Id. at 115.
Id. at 112.
Id. at 119.
Id. at 116, 118
Dkt 239 (Miller Trial Test. at 129).
Id. at 130-31.
Id. at 133-34.
Id. at 138.
Id. at 154-55, 156-57.
Id. at 144.
Id. at 148.
Id. at 147-49.
Dkt. 239 (Fitzpatrick Trial Test. at 196-97).
Id. at 197.
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl.).
Dkt. 239 (Fitzpatrick Trial Test. at 201-03).
Id. at 197.
Id. at 198-99.
Id. at 200-01, 206-07.
Id. at 207.
Id. at 208.
Id. at 209.
Dkt. 240 (Simon Trial Test. at 64).
Id. at 63, 67.
Id. at 63; Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl.).
Dkt. 240 (Simon Trial Test. at 64-66).
Id. at 65, 67.
Id. at 68, 73.
Id. at 68.
Id. at 63, 68, 69-70.
Id. at 69-70.
Id. at 69-70.
Dkt. 230-22 (Jackson Dep. at 8, 14).
Id. at 26, 40, 41.
Id. at 7.
Id. at 9, 13, 15-16, 18.
Id. at 23.
Id. at 23.
Id. at 69.
Dkt. 230-38 (Oberdorf Dep. at 7, 9).
Id. at 13.
Id. at 42.
Id. at 78-80, 87-89, 113-14.
Id. at 62.
Id. at 66.
Id. at 63-64, 69.
Id. at 103.
Dkt. 239 (Fudge Trial Test. at 79).
Id. at 80.
Id. at 81; see also Pls.' Demonstrative Ex. 19.
Dkt. 239 (Fudge Trial Test. at 81). For part of his time as a congressman, the district that Stokes represented was called District 21. Id. at 88.
Id. at 82.
Id. at 83.
Id. at 84. On cross-examination, Congresswoman Fudge admitted that in 2011 she was publicly quoted as saying that she was "not upset about how [her] district had been drawn." Id. at 98. She explained that as an elected official, she would "never insult the people that I'm going to represent by saying 'I don't want to represent you.' " She also stated that she believed that she had been misquoted. Id. at 98-99.
Id. at 85.
Id. at 85-86.
Id. at 99.
Id. at 100.
Id. at 101.
Id. at 102.
Id. at 102-03.
Id. at 102.
Id. at 89.
Dkt. 240 (Turner Trial Test. at 7-8).
Id. at 8-9.
See id. at 9-10.
Id. at 10-11.
See, e.g. , id. at 16-17. Defendants object to Senator Turner's testimony as speculation that the Republicans "guaranteed" a 12-4 map. Plaintiffs contend that Senator Turner's testimony goes to the knowledge and belief of the Democratic members of Ohio's General Assembly regarding H.B. 319. Defendants' objection is overruled. This evidence is admissible to demonstrate Senator Turner's belief that it was a 12-4 map, which in turn supports why she voted against H.B. 319 and made a floor speech opposing the adoption of it.
See generally Trial Ex. J03 (Ohio Senate Session, Sept. 21, 2011 at 50-56) (statement of Sen. Turner).
Dkt. 240 (Turner Trial Test. at 13).
Id. at 14.
Id. at 17-18.
Id. at 18.
Id. at 18-19, 23.
Id. at 20; see also Trial Ex. J05 (Ohio State Senate Session, Dec. 14, 2011 at 22-27) (statement of Sen. Turner).
Dkt. 240 (Turner Trial Test. at 20).
Id. at 25-26, 34; Dkt. 253 (Defs.' & Intervenors' PFOF at ยถ 214).
Dkt. 240 (Turner Trial Test. at 27-33).
See id. Moreover, we observe again that a majority of the Democratic Caucus, including the African-American members, voted against H.B. 369.
See Dkt. 249 (Kaptur Trial Test. at 69).
Id. at 69-70. Representative Kaptur's office also had no documents related to the 2011 redistricting process. Id. at 81.
Id. at 73-74.
Id. at 81-82.
Id. at 76, 89.
Id. at 78-79.
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 146).
Id. at 152.
Id. at 154.
Id. at 154-55.
Id. at 156. Going into the redistricting, Republicans held a 13-5 majority in Ohio's congressional delegation. DiRossi, however, also maintained that he was not simply trying to draw twelve "Republican districts" in the map. Id. at 158.
Id. at 157. Plaintiffs object to this statement, and similar statements made by DiRossi, as hearsay. The statement is admissible, however, for the limited purpose to show the effect on DiRossi, i.e., that he did not pair Representative Fudge against another incumbent, but it cannot be used for the truth that various persons in fact thought it was a bad idea to pair Representative Fudge against another incumbent. See Biegas v. Quickway Carriers, Inc. ,
See generally id. at 159-66. Plaintiffs again object to DiRossi's testimony as to what other political officials said as hearsay. For the reasons explained in supra note 242, the statements are admissible for the limited purpose of showing why DiRossi drew the districts the way he did, but they cannot be used as evidence for what Democrats actually did or did not want or what Democrats said due to the multiple layers of hearsay. Again, this line of testimony from DiRossi was often extremely vague and unclear.
DiRossi also testified to changes to District 9 between H.B. 319 and 369-specifically that there "was much more Toledo in [H.B. 369 than in H.B. 319] and ... less Cleveland." Id. at 166. We observe that some portions of Lucas County were added to District 9 in H.B. 369, and the Cleveland side had small portions dropped and added . See Trial Ex. I-072 (Changes from H.B. 319 to H.B. 369 at 11-14) (yellow represents geography in both plans, green represents geography that was added in H.B. 369, and red represents geography that was dropped in H.B. 369); Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 187). Ultimately, this testimony is inconsequential because there were no material geographic changes between H.B. 319 to H.B. 369, see Trial Ex. I-072; see also Dkt. 246 (Judy Trial Test. at 83), and any changes between H.B. 319 and H.B. 369 to the partisan makeup of District 9 (or any district) were not material whatsoever. The Court also notes that Plaintiffs object to the admissibility of Exhibit I-072 on the basis that DiRossi lacked foundation to testify about the exhibit because he did not create it. The Court summarily overrules that objection because DiRossi, as one of the primary map drawers, was intimately familiar with the changes from H.B. 319 to H.B. 369. DiRossi provided sufficient testimony to establish his personal knowledge of the changes and indicated that Exhibit I-072 was a fair and accurate rendering of the changes. See e.g. , Dkt 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 191). He does not need to create the exhibit in order to lay the foundation for its admittance. See Fed. R. Evid. 602.
See generally Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 166-75, 177-79, 183-84). Plaintiffs' hearsay objections to this line of testimony are overruled in part for the same reasons already discussed. See supra note 242. In any event, for the reasons we explain later in the Opinion, we find, importantly, that, any changes did not alter the partisan makeup of the map, and the geographic changes were not very significant either. See, e.g. , Trial Ex. I-072 (Changes from H.B. 319 to H.B. 369). Furthermore, the overarching intent remained partisan in that no changes would be made that would put the 12-4 map in favor of Republicans at risk.
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 174-75).
Id. at 169; see also supra note 242.
Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 193-94).
Id. at 194.
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 172).
Id. at 177-78. For the reasons explained previously, supra note 242, DiRossi's testimony is admissible only as evidence for why he drew District 3 a certain way. The statement is inadmissible for the truth that certain Republicans wanted to create a district for Joyce Beatty.
See Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 187-98); Trial Ex. I-072 (Changes from H.B. 319 to H.B. 369). Again, in the exhibit, yellow represents geography that stayed the same in both plans, green represents geography that was added in H.B. 369, and red represents geography that was dropped in H.B. 369. Dkt, 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 187).
See Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 188-93, 195) (referring mainly to District 3 and purported requests related to District 9). DiRossi further testified that no changes were made to District 11 between H.B. 319 and H.B. 369, and because there were no requests from legislative Democrats related to District 11, he "thought [the map drawers] got it right the first time." Id. at 195.
See, e.g. , Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 184).
Id. at 219, 287.
Id. at 199.
Id. at 199-200
Id. at 200.
Id. at 199-200, 229.
Id. at 224. DiRossi further admitted that Kincaid made at least some changes to the maps, and DiRossi received the PVI from Kincaid. See id. at 265, 278.
Trial Ex. P124 (Sept. 10, 2011 email); see Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 239). State Senator Niehaus also sent an email to DiRossi and Whatman on September 11, 2011, which stated that Senator Niehaus was "still committed to ending up with a map that Speaker Boehner fully supports, with or without votes from two members of leadership." Trial Ex. P125 (Sept. 11, 2011 email); Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 240-43). One day later, Senator Niehaus asked DiRossi via email titled "Proposed map for LSC [Legislative Service Commission]": "Did Whatman sign off?" DiRossi confirmed that "Whatman signed off." Trial Ex. P126 (Sept. 12, 2011 emails); Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 255). LSC puts the maps into final bill form. See Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 220). H.B. 319 ultimately went public on September 13, 2011. Id. at 260. The individuals on the email chains leading up to this time were using their personal (rather than State of Ohio) email addresses. Id. at 270-71. Lastly, several of the emails entered into evidence on cross-examination contained political data in the text of the email but none of the other demographic data that DiRossi mentioned he had in Maptitude.
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Trial Test. at 284); see also id. at 285 (DiRossi further stating that "[i]t may have been slightly less than 800 people ....").
Id. at 284.
This summary discusses only Speaker Batchelder's trial testimony from his direct examination as well as the portions of the cross-examination that were within the scope of the direct examination. See Fed. R. Evid. 611(b). The Court also relies on the properly designated sections of Speaker Batchelder's deposition.
Dkt. 246 (Batchelder Trial Test. at 18-19).
Id. at 20. The Court considers this testimony as evidence that Speaker Batchelder was concerned about District 11's continuance as an African-American district. To the extent that the testimony is offered as evidence of Forbes's concern, it is inadmissible hearsay. The Court does not, therefore, consider the testimony for the truth of whether Forbes was concerned about District 11 but only for the ultimate purpose of showing what effect, if any, Forbes's statements had on Speaker Batchelder.
Id. at 22-23.
Id. at 24. Plaintiffs again object to any testimony about what Mr. Forbes said as hearsay. For the reasons previously discussed, the Court will consider such testimony only for a limited purpose.
Id. at 50.
Id. at 25. Again, the Court does not consider this out-of-court statement by the chairman for the truth of the matter asserted, but rather only for its effect on Speaker Batchelder.
Dkt. 246 (Judy Trial Test. at 67-68).
Id. at 81.
Id. at 70-79.
Id. at 72-73.
Id. at 73-74.
Id. at 74.
Id. at 75.
Id. at 74-75.
Id. at 70.
Id. at 71; see also id. at 72 (Judy confirming that it was his "understanding and belief that the reason for the shape and location of Congressional District 3 was based on Speaker Batchelder's relationships with and conversations with the Beattys").
Id. at 70. Plaintiffs object to this testimony for lack of foundation regarding demographic changes in Ohio and the effect of those changes on the map-drawing process. The Court overrules this objection and finds that Judy is providing his personal knowledge of factors that accounted for the drawing of District 3, including his understanding of demographic changes.
Id. at 77.
Judy later stated that he believed that Ruvolo was chairman of the Democratic Party. Id. at 77.
Id. at 74; see also id. at 77 (stating that the Republicans "configured the district ... at the behest of the Democratic leadership").
Id. at 77.
Id. at 70.
Id. at 74.
Id. at 76.
Id. at 83.
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 180).
Id. at 184, 187.
Id. at 190.
Id. at 190-91.
One of these metrics, partisan symmetry in the vote-seat curve, can be measured in two ways. See Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 10-12).
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 195).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 4).
"Wasted" votes has a technical meaning in this context. Of course, individual votes are counted; thus, individuals' votes are not "wasted" in that sense. Rather, in partisan-gerrymandering cases, "wasted" votes capture a party's efficiency (or inefficiency) in translating the votes that it receives into legislative seats-because "the goal of a partisan gerrymander is to win as many seats as possible given a certain number of votes ." Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos & Eric M. McGhee, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap ,
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 196-97).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 6) (quoting Stephanopoulos & McGhee, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap, supra ). Dr. Warshaw used the version of the efficiency gap equation that accounts for unequal turnouts across districts. See id. at 7-8.
Id. at 8.
Id. at 8, 19-20, 23.
Id. at 23.
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 3).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 10).
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 202).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 27). Dr. Warshaw used the same elections data to conduct his symmetry analysis as he did with the other partisan-bias metrics. See id. at 6.
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 4).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 8) (citing Jonathan S. Krasno et al., Can Gerrymanders be Detected? An Examination of Wisconsin's State Assembly , Am. politics Res. (2018); Robin E. Best et al., Considering the Prospects for Establishing a Packing Gerrymandering Standard , Election L.J. (2017); Samuel Wang, Three Tests for Practical Evaluation of Partisan Gerrymandering ,
Id. at 24.
Id. at 25.
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 3).
See Trial Ex. 571 (Warshaw Rep. at 12-13) (explaining the exact method for calculating the declination metric of a given map).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 26).
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 3).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 8).
Dr. Warshaw therefore included in his analysis only states with more than six congressional seats. Id. at 19 n.22.
Id. at 12.
See id. at 11-12.
Id. at 8-9.
Id. at 13.
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 197); see also Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 14) (demonstrating high levels of correlation between measures of partisan bias in states where the Democratic vote share was 40-60%).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 4).
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 191, 194). Warshaw discusses how partisan control of the redistricting process results in measurable changes in the efficiency gap in favor of the party in control, both in Ohio and elsewhere. Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 17-18).
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 194). Dr. Warshaw testified that his approach of not considering roll-call votes cast by the non-controlling party is the accepted one in political science. Id.
Id. at 192.
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 192).
Id. at 4.
Id. at 15.
Id. at 28.
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 11).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 29).
Id. at 15.
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 12-13).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 4).
Id. at 31; Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 10).
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 203).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 4-5, 33, 37).
Id. at 5, 32-33, 43; Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 14-15).
Trial Ex. P086 (Cho CV).
See id. ; Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 134-37).
Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 138-39).
Id. at 140-41. We note that Dr. Cho's reports and testimony are subject to a Daubert motion, but Defendants have not objected to Dr. Cho's qualifications. See Dkt. 148, 148-1 (Intervenors' Mot. to Exclude Cho).
The algorithm was written in the coding language C++. Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 155). Importantly, the code is separate and distinct from the algorithm. The algorithm is important because it represents the idea behind Dr. Cho's analysis. The code implements the algorithm. Id. at 156. Dr. Cho has developed this algorithm and code over more than a decade. Id. at 156-57. Defendants raise various objections related to both the algorithm and code in this case.
The Court overrules any objections related to Dr. Cho's code. Although Intervenors complain that the code was not peer reviewed or tested for accuracy, Dr. Cho testified that it is not customary in the field of computer science to subject code itself, as opposed to algorithms, to peer review. Dkt. 243 (Cho Trial Test. at 95-97, 99-100, 127). Intervenors provide no evidence to the contrary. Moreover, Dr. Cho made her code available to Defendants' and Intervenors' expert witnesses in read-only form-and offered to make her code available in native format-to allow them to verify the code. Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 137-41); Trial Ex. IM073 at 2. Intervenors apparently decided not to have their experts verify the entirety of the read-only code. Nor did Intervenors take advantage of Dr. Cho's offer to produce the native version of the code, and we therefore reject their complaint that the code was not tested for accuracy.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 10).
Id. at 8-10.
Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 144).
See generally id. at 144-46.
Intervenors argue in their Daubert motion that Dr. Cho's methodology is flawed. They contend that her algorithm has not been adequately peer reviewed, her results have not been tested or verified, she fails to offer an error rate or confidence level for her results, and her methodology has not been generally accepted by the scientific community. The Court rejects these arguments.
First, the algorithm has been sufficiently peer reviewed. The algorithm was the subject of a paper titled "A Massively Parallel Evolutionary Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithm for Sampling Complicated Multimodal State Spaces," which was published as part of a peer-reviewed conference. Trial Ex. P086 (Cho CV at 2); Dkt.242 (Cho Trial Test. at 154); Dkt. 243 (Cho Trial Test. at 86-87). The idea behind the algorithm was peer-reviewed, which is the standard practice in computer science. Dkt. 243 (Cho Trial Test. at 86-88, 96-98, 126-27). Second, the lack of an error rate or confidence level is to be expected for an algorithm designed to draw a random sample from a complex, multimodal, unknown distribution. The entire point of the algorithm is to draw a sample from an unknown distribution, and if the distribution is unknown, logically, one cannot calculate an error rate or confidence level of the randomness of the sample. See Dkt. 243 (Cho Trial Test. at 93-94). The same answer applies to the argument that the algorithm is untested by other scientists in the community. It appears that the algorithm's accuracy could not be tested on unknown distributions (the very type of distributions from which it is meant to sample); the point is that the theory behind the algorithm's ability to sample from such distributions has passed peer review. Nonetheless, Dr. Cho tested the algorithm on a non-trivial data set with a known distribution and confirmed that the algorithm uniformly sampled that space (although she did not provide the results of that test). Id. at 93-95, 101. She also testified that other computer scientists could write their own code to implement her algorithm to test it on a known distribution. Id. at 96-97. Defendants offered no evidence that any of their experts tested her algorithm against a known distribution and found it flawed. Finally, there is no evidence that the pertinent scientific community does not accept the use of algorithms to solve sampling problems. Indeed, Dr. Cho's innovative algorithm is meant to meld two established types of algorithms-MCMCs and evolutionary algorithms-to permit optimizations heuristics to guide the movements of the Markov chains, resulting in a more efficient draw of a random sample from a complex, multimodal, unknown distribution. See id. at 55, 88, 151-52; Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 6).
Finally, the reliability of Dr. Cho's methodology is bolstered by the fact that she developed this algorithm independently of her work in this case. The fact that she developed the algorithm and submitted it for peer review before tailoring it to and running it in this case shows that she did not develop her methodology solely for litigation purposes. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc. ,
For the reasons above, the Court rejects Intervenors' general challenges to the methodology underlying Dr. Cho's analysis. The Court discusses infra their more specific objection that Dr. Cho's conclusions are entitled to no weight because she erred in setting the redistricting parameters for the algorithm in this particular case.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 6).
Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 152).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 6-7).
Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 152-53); Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 6-7).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 5-7); Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 151, 155); Dkt. 243 (Cho Trial Test. at 69).
See Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 7).
Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 158).
See Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 17-18) (statement of Rep. Huffman).
Id. at 19.
Id. at 21.
Dr. Cho drew a district with a Black Voting Age Population ("BVAP") of at least 45% in the Cleveland area. This constraint is based on the recommendation of Plaintiffs' expert Dr. Lisa Handley. See Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 8). Intervenors lodge a variety of objections to and arguments against this 45% figure. We address these arguments in our discussion of Dr. Handley's report and testimony, see infra Section II.C.4., and in our analysis of the purported VRA justification for District 11, see infra Sections V.A.2.d.iii., V.C.2.b.ii. Dr. Cho did not include any "upper bound" on the maximum BVAP for the minority district. Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 159-60).
The current map splits twenty-three counties and Dr. Cho's simulated maps split no more than twenty-three counties; the current map preserves 96.78% of cities, and Dr. Cho's simulated maps preserve cities at least at the same rate. Id. at 162; Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 8-9). We also note that "communities of interest" may be an amorphous phrase, but one way to account for this factor is preserving municipalities and counties. See, e.g. , Graham v. Thornburgh ,
Dr. Cho's simulated maps allow for a population deviation of up to 1%, or about 7,000 people (not voters). Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 167); see also Dkt. 243 (Cho Trial Test. at 25). This deviation is different from the current map, which achieves perfect equality (plus or minus one person), because the simulated maps are constructed at the precinct level-the lowest level for which partisan data are available-to allow for a more accurate analysis of partisan effect. Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 9). To achieve perfect equality, like the current map, would require splitting precincts, which, in turn, would hinder the partisan-effect analysis. Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 165-66).
We find that Dr. Cho's use of a 1% population deviation does not undermine her analyses in any significant way, and we overrule the objections on this point. Dr. Cho aimed, in part, to measure partisan effects, and this assessment was best done with the 1% deviation. For the simulated maps to achieve perfect equality would require moving, at most, 3,500 people in any given district, not all of whom would be voters; and even if all 3,500 people were voters, all of them would need to vote for the same party in order to have any possibility of swinging an election. That is unlikely. Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 167-68). Accordingly, we are not persuaded that the 1% deviation significantly undermines any of Dr. Cho's conclusions that the 12-4 split of the current map cannot be explained by the equal-population requirement.
Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 171-77). Defendants argue that incumbent protection was one of the main pillars upon which the 2012 map was built. The Court, as factfinder, will address the extent to which the General Assembly considered incumbent protection, and how that conclusion impacts the weight given to Dr. Cho's analysis infra Section V.A.2.b. The Court will also assess the validity of various types of incumbent protection infra Sections V.A.2.d., V.C.2.b.i.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 11).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 11).
See id. at 13-30; see also Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 7, fig. 4) (providing updated analysis based on 2018 election data, as well as other election data).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 13).
Id. at 15.
State Senator Keith Faber, a Republican, speaking in support of H.B. 319, stated that "competitiveness in and of itself is not an end-all be-all. It is not one of the requirements that we have to draw by. However, it is a factor." Trial Ex. J03 (Ohio Senate Session, Sept. 21, 2011 at 13) (statement of Sen. Faber).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 31-32); Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 186-87).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 33).
Id. at 34-35.
See Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 5, tbl. 4).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 34).
Id. at 35.
Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 4).
Id. at 6. She arrives at this conclusion, in part, after observing that in the two competitive 2018 elections, the Democratic challengers noticeably outspent their Republican-incumbent opponents. Id. at 5-6, tbl. 5.
Dr. Cho also captures the total number of competitive seats combined with how many of the competitive seats each party wins in a single metric, which has been presented in two of her publications. Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 196-97); Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 36). Dr. Cho employed this metric only after creating the maps, i.e., competitiveness was not a factor in how the simulated maps were drawn. Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 196-98). Under this metric, competitiveness scores range from zero to one, and at zero, "competitiveness is maximized because 1) the number of Republican votes and the number of Democratic votes is the same and 2) the number of districts where Republicans dominate and the number of districts where the Democrats dominate is identical." Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 36). Figure 23 in Dr. Cho's initial report shows that the current map is less competitive compared to the simulated maps; whereas most of the simulated maps score between 0.09 and 0.11, the current map scores 0.16 under this competitiveness metric. See id. at 37, fig. 23. We consider this specific metric only for Dr. Cho's conclusion that competitiveness was seemingly a "non-existent factor" in drawing the current map. Dr. Cho's other analyses of competitiveness, however, go to that conclusion and her separate conclusion that the lack of competitiveness across districts produces an enduring partisan effect.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 37).
See id. at 37-40.
Id. at 39; Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 199-200).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 38).
Id. at 39.
See id. at 39-40, fig. 26.
See id.
Id. at 39.
Id. at 40, fig. 26.
Id. at 40.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 33); Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 188).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 33, fig. 19).
See Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 3, fig. 1); Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 190-91).
See Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 3, fig. 1); Dkt. 242 (Cho Trial Test. at 191).
Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 3).
Trial Ex. P525 (Niven CV).
See id. ; Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 5).
Trial Ex. P525 (Niven CV); Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 6, 72).
Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 72-73).
Id. at 72. Again, "communities of interest" is an amorphous term, but one way to account for this factor is preserving municipalities and counties. See Graham ,
See id. at 9; see also Dkt. 154 (Defs.' Mot. to Exclude Niven). We deny Defendants' motion, but as explained here and in our later analysis, we give greater weight and credit to certain portions of Dr. Niven's report and testimony than others.
A census tract is a "small, relatively permanent statistical subdivision of a county or equivalent entity ...." See U.S. Census Bureau, Glossary , at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/glossary.html#par_textimage_13 ("Census tract boundaries generally follow visible and identifiable features. They may follow nonvisible legal boundaries, such as minor civil division (MCD) or incorporated place boundaries in some states and situations, to allow for census-tract-to-governmental-unit relationships where the governmental boundaries tend to remain unchanged between censuses.")
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 1-2); see also Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 11-15).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 5).
Id. at 5-6; Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 18); see also Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 77) (Dr. Niven stating on cross-examination that he would not be surprised that 88.75% of all census tracts were kept whole).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 6).
See Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 105).
The four-election index includes the 2008 presidential election, and the 2010 gubernatorial, attorney general, and auditor elections. See Trial Ex. P526 (Niven Resp. at 1 n.3).
Id. at 2. A Republican census tract is one that scored 0.50 or higher on the four-election index; a Democratic census tract is one that scored 0.499 or lower. Id.
This index included those elections in the four-election index and four additional elections: the 2008 attorney general election, and the 2010 secretary of state, treasurer, and U.S. Senate elections. Id. at 1-2 n.5.
Id. at 2-3.
Dr. Niven elaborated on these findings at trial. See generally Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 20-23).
Dr. Niven's analysis regarding the location of congressional offices could benefit from further explanation. Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 4). For example, there is no explanation as to whether Democratic constituents were burdened more than Republican constituents. Accordingly, we do not consider this specific portion of Dr. Niven's report and testimony.
Id. at 5.
Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 12); see also id. at 38.
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 6) (citation omitted).
Id. at 8.
See id. at 7; Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 27, 30).
This index included the OCURD data and the 2008 presidential election, and the 2010 gubernatorial, attorney general, and auditor elections. Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 2).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 8).
Id. at 12.
Id. at 11; see also Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test at 36) ("[C]andidates campaign to and for those neighborhoods.").
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 13).
Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 33); see also id. at 34-35.
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 9-11). We give these particular examples some weight, though they seem to be simply illustrative of the overall trends, which are more important, found by Dr. Niven.
Id. at 15.
Id. at 16-17; see also Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 42-44).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 16).
Id. at 19.
Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 46).
Id. at 100-01.
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 19); Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 47).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 22).
Id. at 22, 24.
Id. at 20.
Id. at 24; see also id. at 24 n.57.
See id. at 25.
Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 54); see also Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 26).
Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 56); see also id. at 57 ("without zooming in a little bit," according to Dr. Niven, "you can't appreciate the degree to which ... street by street, house by house, people can be divided ...."); see also Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 26-27).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 28).
Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 57-58); Trial Ex. P526 (Niven Resp. at 3).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 27-28 & nn.59, 61-63). Dr. Niven relied on news coverage, as he typically does in his scholarship, for this portion of his report and testimony. See Dkt. 242 (Niven Trial Test. at 60); see also Fed. R. Evid. 803(18).
See Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 27-28 & nn.59, 61-63).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 29) (noting that President Obama won Summit County by about 41,000 votes in 2008 and that Dr. Niven's index scores Summit County as 0.4065, or, put differently, only 40.65% Republican).
Id. at 31-32.
Id. at 32.
Dkt. 240 (Handley Trial Test. at 132-33).
Id. at 133.
Id. at 134.
Id. at 135.
Id. at 135-136. Intervenors filed a Motion to Exclude the Expert Report and Testimony of Dr. Handley prior to trial and maintained their objections at trial. Dkt. 152-1 (Intervenors' Mot. to Exclude Handley); Dkt. 240 (Handley Trial Test. at 136). Intervenors argued that Dr. Handley's report and testimony were irrelevant because the case at bar is a partisan-gerrymandering case, not a VRA case. They also argued that her report and testimony were improper because they relied on data post-dating the drawing of the 2012 plan and failed to include a confidence interval. Dkt. 152-1 (Intervenors' Mot. to Exclude Handley at 1-2). We address each argument in turn.
First, we reject Intervenors' argument that the Section 2 analysis is irrelevant. It is true that Plaintiffs have challenged the 2012 map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, not as a violation of Section 2 of the VRA. However, Defendants have made Section 2's requirements relevant to this case. They have argued that District 11 was drawn in its present shape in part to ensure that African-American voters were able to elect their preferred candidate in that district. Plaintiffs therefore offer Dr. Handley's testimony to challenge that justification and demonstrate that there was no need to extend District 11 south into Summit County to pick up additional African-American voters to comply with the VRA. We discuss the interaction of the VRA, Defendants' minority electoral opportunity justification, and Dr. Handley's analysis further in Sections V.A.2.d.iii., V.C.2.b.ii., where we scrutinize each of Defendants' proffered legitimate legislative justifications.
Second, while Dr. Handley's report and analysis do rely in part on data that post-dated the 2011 redistricting and therefore was unavailable to the map drawers at the time, they also rely on data that predates the redistricting. Dkt. 240 (Handley Trial Test. at 150). The pattern of District 11 electing Black-preferred candidates by sizable margins does not differ between the pre-2011 and post-2011 elections that Dr. Handley considered. Id. at 151. Any issues that Dr. Handley's reliance on data that was not available to the map drawers in 2011 presents will go to the weight that we give Dr. Handley's testimony, not its admissibility.
Third, we conclude that Dr. Handley adequately explained why she did not provide confidence intervals for her ecological-inference analysis, and we overrule Intervenors' objection on that basis. Dr. Handley provided standard errors for each of her ecological-inference estimates. Id. at 143. However, she explained that she did not use the standard errors to produce confidence intervals because that would require a normal distribution, and the ecological-inference analysis does not produce a normal distribution. Id. at 143-44. She testified that she "routinely" submits expert reports involving ecological-inference estimates without confidence intervals, and that these reports have been accepted. Id. at 144.
Trial Ex. P254 (Handley Rep. at 2 n.2). Representative Louis Stokes was elected in 1968 and served as a congressman for 30 years. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones was then elected in 1998. She was succeeded by Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, who has represented District 11 since 2008. Id.
Id. at 5.
Trial Ex. P254 (Handley Rep. at 3).
Id. at 1.
Dkt. 240 (Handley Trial Test. at 137, 142)
Id. at 142.
Id. at 142-43.
Id. at 143.
Id. at 150.
Trial Ex. P254 (Handley Rep. at 17); Dkt. 240 (Handley Trial Test. at 149).
Dkt. 240 (Handley Trial Test. at 149).
Trial Ex. P254 (Handley Rep. at 1).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 136).
Id. at 136-37.
Id. at 137-38.
Id. at 139.
Id. at 140.
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 143).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 3); Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 146). Ballot Initiative 1 requires that "any plan drawn in the future, at least after the 2020 census at minimum, would have to keep the city of Cincinnati in a single district and the city of Cleveland in a single district." Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 146).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 3).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 151-52).
Trial Ex. P092 (Cooper Suppl. Decl. at 1).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 147).
Id. at 147-48.
Id. at 157-58.
Id. at 158.
Id. at 148.
Id. at 150.
Id. at 151.
Id. at 153-56.
Id. at 150; Trial Ex. P091 (Cooper Errata at 3; Ex. Q); Trial Ex. P454 (Cooper Decl. Apps. at Ex. F).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 158-59).
Id. at 157; Trial Ex. P454 (Cooper Decl. Apps. at Ex. H). Mr. Cooper also explained that the chart was somewhat misleading because the Reock and Polsby-Popper scores for District 9 are inflated "because of the way the Census Bureau has extended water blocks that are part of these Counties along Lake Erie, out into the middle of Lake Erie. And if you remove those water blocks, then District 9 scores very low." Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 157).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 159).
Id. at 160.
Trial Ex. P454 (Cooper Decl. Apps. at Ex. D-3; E-2); Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 160-61).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 161).
Id. at 141.
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 2).
Id. at 4-19.
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 135).
Id. at 136-37.
Id. at 137.
Id. at 140.
Dkt. 274 (Hood Trial Test. at 141). Prior to trial, Plaintiffs filed a Daubert motion to exclude the expert report and testimony of Dr. Hood. Dkt. 150-1 (Pls.' Mot. to Exclude Hood). We conclude that none of Plaintiffs' criticisms of Dr. Hood's report and testimony are sufficiently severe to preclude us from qualifying him as an expert. Rather, where well-founded, they will impact the weight that we will give his testimony and report.
Courts in several other cases in which Dr. Hood has testified as an expert witness have afforded Dr. Hood's testimony little weight for similar reasons. See, e.g., Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless v. Husted , No. 06-cv-896,
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 144-45).
Id. at 145.
Id. at 146.
Id. at 193.
Id. at 144.
Id. at 147-48.
Id. at 148, 198; see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 8, tbl. 7). Dr. Hood did not calculate the compactness scores himself; he requested that they be calculated and reproduced the reports. Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 189).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 148-49); see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 8, tbl. 8).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 149); see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 9, tbl. 9).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 198-99).
Id. at 148; see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 9, tbl. 10).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 150).
Id. at 197.
Id. at 151.
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 154).
Id. at 155.
Id. at 199-200.
Id. at 156.
Plaintiffs argue that Dr. Hood cherry-picked the elections in his partisan index to skew the results, particularly by omitting 2002 election data. See id. at 207-13.
Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 15, tbl. 15). Hood termed a district a safe Republican district if the partisan index indicated that it would vote over 55% Republican. Competitive, Republican-leaning districts would vote 50-55% Republican. Safe Democratic districts would vote less than 45% Republican, and competitive, Democratic-leaning districts would vote 45-50% Republican. Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 157).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 160).
Id. at 216-17.
Id. at 219.
Id. at 220-21.
Dr. Hood agreed that the races he included in creating this index "were the two most Republican of the five statewide races in 2014," and therefore the application of this index would make the map look more Republican-leaning than the application of an index that included the other races. Id. at 230.
Id. at 168-70; see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at App., figs. 7-8); Trial Ex. D5 (Hood Suppl. Rep. at 8, tbl. 6).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 171); see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 30).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 172).
Id. at 160.
Id. at 161; see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 18, tbl. 17); Trial Ex. D5 (Hood Suppl. Rep. at 4, tbl. 2).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 163).
Dkt. 249 (Hood Trial Test. at 9-10).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 163-64).
Id. at 164; see also Trial Ex. D4 (Hood Rep. at 20, tbl. 19); Trial Ex. D5 (Hood Suppl. Rep. at 5, tbl. 4) (reflecting the fundraising in the 2018 congressional elections, in which three challengers outraised the incumbents they faced).
Dkt. 249 (Hood Trial Test. at 9).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 166).
Id. at 167.
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton CV).
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 86).
Id. at 87-88.
See Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton CV); Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 90-91).
See Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton CV); Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 125-27).
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 92-93); see also Dkt. 155, 155-1 (Pls.' Mot. to Exclude Thornton). We deny Plaintiffs' Daubert motion, but we consider Dr. Thornton's report and testimony for limited purposes and do not credit portions of her analysis, as explained herein.
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 91).
See Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 24-27).
Id. at 4.
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 133-35); see also Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton CV) (C and C++ are not included in the programming languages listed as ones of which she has knowledge).
This distinction between reviewing the algorithm and the code is underscored by Dr. Cho's testimony on behalf of the defendants in a Pennsylvania gerrymandering case. As Dr. Cho explained in her report in that case (which was read into the record on cross-examination at this trial): "[I]ndeed, the point is not whether I would have been allowed some short amount of time to view the code, but whether the algorithm has been sufficiently scrutinized by the scientific community to allow others, including the Courts, to have confidence in the process and the results." See Dkt. 243 (Cho Trial Test. at 84). Nonetheless, the fact remains that Plaintiffs offered to provide the full code to Defendants, who apparently declined the offer.
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 129).
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 12).
We note, however, that Dr. Cho's competitiveness metric (which Dr. Cho used after generating the simulated maps) is based on optimal competitiveness. As such, the closer a map is to an 8-8 partisan outcome, the more competitive the map will score, i.e., a score closer to zero under Dr. Cho's competitiveness metric. See supra note 400. We consider this specific metric only for Dr. Cho's conclusion that competitiveness seems to have been "almost a non-existent factor if one at all" in the drawing of H.B. 369. See supra Section II.C.2.b.i. & note 400. Dr. Cho's other competitiveness analyses support that conclusion, too.
See Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 15-17 & fig. 1).
Id. at 16.
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 112).
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 19).
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 113).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 31) ("We do not have a system of proportional representation ...."). In fact, Dr. Thornton is the only expert in this case who incorporates an assumption of proportional representation into her analysis.
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 21).
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 21-24); Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 115-16).
See Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 26-27); Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 116-17).
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 26).
See Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 6).
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 26).
Dkt. 246 (Thornton Trial Test. at 116).
Trial Ex. D8 (Thornton Rep. at 26).
See Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 6).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell CV).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell CV); Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 189-91).
Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 192).
Id. at 192-93. Plaintiffs filed a Daubert motion to exclude Dr. Brunell. Plaintiffs argue his methodology renders his opinions unreliable, but Plaintiffs do not object to his qualifications. See id. ; Dkt. 153, 153-1 (Pls.' Mot. to Exclude Brunell). We deny Plaintiffs motion, but at the same time, we do not give much weight to Dr. Brunell's report and testimony and find portions of it unhelpful, as explained below. In brief, much of his report suffers from a scarcity of explanation. The Court notes that Dr. Brunell offered a few new and previously undisclosed expert opinions at trial. To the extent that Dr. Brunell offered expert opinions on topics about which he was previously made aware but failed to include in his report, we exclude such testimony because it was neither substantially justified nor harmless. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)(B)(i) ; 37(c)(1).
Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 194).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 2).
For example, Dr. Brunell criticizes Dr. Cho for not turning over any shape files that would visually display some of her maps. Id. ("It is ... highly unlikely that any of them would be considered by the legislature."); Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 197). Although it is true that Dr. Cho did not turn over "shape files," we credit Dr. Cho's report and testimony and find that her simulated maps serve their purpose as maps that incorporate only neutral criteria in order to assess expected partisan outcomes based on, for example, political geography.
Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 196-97).
See Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 19) (statement of Rep. Huffman). Dr. Brunell also criticizes Dr. Cho for failing to consider preserving the core of prior districts in her simulated maps. Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 11); Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 204). But he also testified that this criterion is "part of protecting incumbents at one level," and he agreed that this criterion could appear as improperly partisan "since the Republicans were advantaged ahead of time or they had more seats before the last round of redistricting ... then that would carry through ... to the next round of redistricting." Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 205).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 5); see also id. at 4 (lodging the same critique at the fact that Dr. Cho's simulated maps produced three concentrated percentages of BVAPs, and concluding that "at least for this variable, there are really slight variations on three different districts").
Trial Ex. P088 (Cho Rebuttal Rep. at 14-15).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 7).
Dkt. 246 (Brunell Trial Test. at 218).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 9, tbl. 1).
Trial Ex. P088 (Cho Rebuttal Rep. at 15).
Id. at 9; see also id. at 9-11.
Trial Ex. P088 (Cho Rebuttal Rep. at 5).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 12-13).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 6-7 n.5).
Indeed, as Dr. Warshaw testified at trial, although he used congressional election results, other election results would "yield very similar answers ... [b]ecause the voters are cleanly sorted into parties and they typically vote the same way for different offices, the correlation between congressional election results and presidential election results is about .9." Dkt. 241 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 34).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 14).
Trial Ex. P572 (Warshaw Rebuttal Rep. at 5).
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 14).
Id. at 16-17.
Id. at 16.
Id. at 18.
Dkt. 247 (Brunell Trial Test. at 94).
Id. at 95.
Trial Ex. I-060 (Brunell Rep. at 19).
Dkt. 230-15 (Goldenhar Dep. at 7).
Id. at 11-13.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 13).
See Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 4, fig. 2). Figure 2 shows two competitive elections under the Proposed Remedial Plan, both of which would be won by the Republican candidate; one election in which a Democratic candidate would receive 44.3% of the vote; and one election won by the Democratic candidate with 57.2% of the vote. The 2012 plan, by contrast, has one competitive election, in which the Democratic candidate received 47.8% of the vote; the next closest election was in 2016, in which the Democratic candidate received 40.7%.
Dkt. 239 (Burks Trial Test. at 225).
See id.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 14).
See Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 4, fig. 2).
See Dkt. 230-21 (Inskeep Dep. at 6-7, 28-29).
Id. at 7-8.
Id. at 53-54.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 15).
Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 4, fig. 2). Figure 2 shows that, under the current plan, the Democratic vote share exceeds 70% in 2012 and 2018. Under the Proposed Remedial Plan, these percentages are 66.9% for 2012 and 68.3% for 2018.
See Dkt. 230-30 (Libster Dep. at 9-10).
Id. at 54-55.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 16).
See Dkt. 230-11 (Deitsch Dep. at 14).
Id. at 19.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 17).
Dkt. 230-6 (Boothe Dep. at 7-8).
Id. at 21. Boothe voted for a Republican once, but she "learned her lesson" and doesn't "think [she] would ever do it again. It would have to be an extreme circumstance ...." Id. at 49, 90.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 18).
Dkt. 240 (Griffiths Trial Test. at 40).
Id. at 40-42. Griffiths voted Republican once, in the 2016 Senate race. Id. at 41-42.
Id. at 40. The Court takes judicial notice of the fact that Representative Gibbs previously served in Congress for District 18, which was eliminated due to Ohio losing two seats in Congress after the 2010 census. Fed. R. Evid. 201.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 19).
See Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 4, fig. 2).
Dkt. 230-36 (Nadler Dep. at 6-7).
Id. at 8.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 20).
Dkt. 230-40 (Rader Dep. at 8-9, 13)
Id. at 18; see also, e.g. , id. at 29-30.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 22).
Dkt. 230-50 (Walker Dep. at 8-9).
Id. at 11, 28.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 21).
Dkt. 230-32 (Megnin Dep. at 9, 13).
Id. at 68, 71-72.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 23).
Dkt. 230-17 (Harris Dep. at 7-8, 10).
Id. at 10.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 24).
Dkt. 240 (Dagres Trial Test. at 84-85).
Id. at 85.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 25).
See Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 4, fig. 2).
See id.
Dkt. 240 (Myer Trial Test. at 112-13).
Id. at 115.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 26).
See Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 4, fig. 2).
See id. No elections in this district under the current plan were competitive.
Dkt. 230-20 (Hutton Dep. at 8-10).
Id. at 12.
Id. at 12-16.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 27).
Dkt. 220-48 (Thobaben Dep. at 8-9).
Id. at 9-11.
Id. at 11.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 28).
Dkt. 230-42 (Rubin Dep. at 7-8).
Id. at 16, 23-24. Rubin says that it is "[h]ighly doubtful" that she would vote for a Republican again, id. at 24-25, and Rubin has been a member of the Stark County Democratic Party since 1984 and served on its Central Committee from 2004 to 2010, id. at 16.
The Court takes judicial notice of this fact. Fed. R. Evid. 201.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 29).
See Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 5-13).
Id. at 4.
See Trial Ex. P385 (Congressional Redistricting Talking Points at LWVOH_0052438).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 40).
Id. (emphasis added); see also id. at 33-37 (analyzing competitiveness and concluding that the simulated maps are more competitive than the current map, thus providing evidence that the current map packs and cracks voters).
Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 3).
See trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 11, 14-18); see also Trial Ex. P092 (Cooper Suppl. Decl.) (providing hypothetical maps that pair the same number of incumbents and in the same configuration (a Republican pairing, a Democratic pairing, and a Democratic candidate versus a Republican candidate) as the 2012 plan but are similar in demographic and partisan measures to the Proposed Remedial Plan).
See Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 21-27); Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 6-8).
See Trial Ex. P091 (Cooper Errata at 2, fig. 1).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 43).
See generally Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 13-29); see also Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 3-4) (showing that, using data from across election cycles, the simulated maps contain more competitive districts and that H.B. 369 is an outlier compared to the simulated maps in terms of how many seats Republicans win).
Dkt. 239 (Miller Trial Test. at 154-55, 156-57).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 43).
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 1).
Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 3) ("In each of the simulation analyses [using data from the 2008-2018 election cycles], 9 Republican seats is the common and expected outcome of a non-partisan map creation process.").
Of course, a legislature's failure to act is insufficient alone to warrant the Court's intervention. See Gill ,
State Supreme Courts, too, have established judicially manageable standards by which to evaluate compliance with their own state constitutions. See League of Women Voters v. Commonwealth , --- Pa. ----,
See, e.g. , Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 210-11) (efficiency gap); id. at 223 (mean-median difference); id. at 229-30 (declination); id. at 238 (the two asymmetry measures).
See Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 191-92, 246-48).
One critique of the efficiency gap is that it is not equivalent to proportional representation. See Benjamin Plener Cover, Quantifying Partisan Gerrymandering: An Evaluation of the Efficiency Gap Proposal ,
For additional background information, see Brief for Historians as Amicus Curiae Supporting Appellees, Gill v. Whitford ,
See Ariz. State Legislature ,
Available at: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-9-1891-third-annual-message-0.
We observe that Arizona State Legislature cited Ohio as an example. See Ohio Rev. Code ยง 103.51 (creating a legislative task force on redistricting). But this statute did not remove the political parties from the redistricting process (nor did it foster a truly bipartisan map-drawing process). The facts of this case clearly show that the political parties and the legislators still draw the maps.
Dkt. 230-13 (Faber Dep. at 21-22).
Trial Ex. P128 (Sept. 12, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018322).
Trial Ex. P112 (Congressional redistricting timeline at DIROSSI_0000140).
Trial Ex. P407 (Sept. 7, 2011 email at LWVOH_0052432).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 222-24).
Trial Ex. J22 (Rep. Huffman Sponsor Test. at 001).
Trial Ex. P126 (Sept. 12, 2011 emails at LVOH_00018298).
Trial Ex. P407 (Sept. 7, 2011 email at LVOH_0052431).
Trial Ex. P127 (Sept. 12, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018320).
Trial Ex. P119 (Sept. 3, 2011 email at LVOH_00018302).
Trial Ex. P394 (Sept. 8, 2011 email at REV_00023234).
Trial Ex. P407 (Sept. 7, 2011 email at LWVOH_0052431) (emphasis added).
Trial Ex. P310 (NRCC Presentation at 5); Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 115-16).
Trial Ex. P310 (NRCC Presentation at 6).
Trial Ex. P414 (State-by-State Redistricting Summary at REV_00000001); Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 519).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 9, 16).
Id. at 8, 15.
Id. at 6, 13.
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 4).
Plaintiffs' First Amendment associational claim rests on statewide evidence, and we discuss this further in Section V.C.
Ohio Sec'y of State, 2002 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2002-elections-results/; Ohio Sec'y of State, 2004 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2004-elections-results/; Ohio Sec'y of State, 2006 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2006-elections-results/; Ohio Sec'y of State, 2008 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2008-election-results/; Ohio Sec'y of State, 2010 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2010-elections-results/. The Court takes judicial notice of the 2002-2010 election results. Fed. R. Evid. 201.
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 25).
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 3).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 24); Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 3).
We further discuss individual districts, as well as their election results and lack of competition, infra .
Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 6).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 43).
Id. at 15.
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 12-13).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5; App. D-3); Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 145).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 7).
Id. at 13.
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 153).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 4, 12).
Dkt. 243 (DiRossi Dep. at 186).
Id. at 186-87.
Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 5-6).
Trial Ex. P310 (NRCC presentation at 5); Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 115-16).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 7).
Id. at 8.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 13).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 145).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 9).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 14).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 146).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 154).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 4, 12).
Dkt. 246 (Judy Trial Test. at 71).
Speaker Batchelder explained that the decision to draw District 3 with Beatty in mind arose because "[w]e had a situation here in Franklin County where the Republican Party didn't have a candidate." Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 50). He went on: "I wasn't out campaigning for a Democrat for Congress, but I had known her and her husband. My first problem was figuring out if they lived in the district , but it was-of course, she has emerged as a leader in the Federal House." Id. at 50-51 (emphasis added). That Speaker Batchelder's "first problem was figuring out if they lived in the district" suggests that District 3 was first created as Whatman and Kincaid's partisan brainchild, and later tweaked to support Beatty's candidacy.
Dkt. 241(Cooper Trial Test. at 161).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 14, 17).
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 14-15).
Trial Ex. P385 (Congressional Redistricting Talking Points at LWVOH_0052438).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 27).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 15).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 16).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 18).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 19).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 20).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 145-46).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 149).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 4-19).
Dkt. 249 (Kaptur Trial Test. at 70).
Id. at 71-72.
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 176).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 4-18).
Id. at 5-6, 13.
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 21-22).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 23).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 155).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 4, 12).
Trial Ex. P130 (Sept. 14, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018321).
This contradicts the testimony of DiRossi, who stated that prior to the introduction of H.B. 319 "it had been relayed to [him] by a number of people that she did not want to be paired with Dennis Kucinich in a district" and therefore that she elected to have District 11 drawn dropping south into Summit County rather than be paired against Representative Kucinich in a district entirely contained within Cuyahoga County. Dkt. 230-12 (DiRossi Dep. at 186-87). DiRossi, however, admitted that he never spoke to Congresswoman Fudge himself. Explaining the source of this information, he stated: "I was working with Bob Bennett and I know that other members, I believe Speaker Batchelder-or I know Speaker Batchelder was talking to a number of folks and contacts that he had in Northern Ohio about what Congresswoman Fudge wanted."Id. at 187. To the extent that Defendants offer DiRossi's testimony about what Congresswoman Fudge wanted for the truth-to prove that she actually desired that District 11 drop down into Summit County or that she did not want to be paired with Representative Kucinich-we find that it is inadmissible multi-layer hearsay.
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Del. at 4, 12).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 31).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 24).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 146).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P310 (NRCC Presentation at 5); Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 115-16).
Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Rep. at 6).
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 25).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 25).
See Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 155-56).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 26).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 27).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 146).
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P310 (NRCC Presentation at 5); Dkt. 230-27 (Kincaid Dep. at 115-16); see also Trial Ex. P556 (Stivers Email at STIVERS_007519); Dkt. 230-46 (Stivers Dep. at 77-78); supra Section I.A.8.
Trial Ex. P524 (Niven Rep. at 22).
Id. at 22-23.
Id. at 24.
Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 12, fig. 5).
Trial Ex. P414 (State-by-State Redistricting Summary at REV_00000001); Dkt. 230-28 (Kincaid Dep. at 519).
Trial Ex. P130 (Sept. 14, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018321).
Trial Ex. P087 (Cho Rep. at 29).
Trial Ex. J01 (House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 19, 21) (statement of Rep. Huffman).
Defendants' own expert, Dr. Hood, admitted that "if the legislature wanted to pair the fewest number of incumbents in enacting the 2012 plan, that would have been two sets of incumbents for four total congressional representatives." Dkt. 247 (Hood. Trial Test. at 192).
Dr. Hood also acknowledged that "someone that retained more of their ... constituents from their previous district probably had an advantage over the other incumbent," and "the incumbent who retained more of their constituents," Representative Renacci, was "favored by the map." Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 194-95). On September 14, 2011, Mann emailed Congressman Renacci responding to his request to see "the population numbers and percentages of Congresswoman Sutton's current district that would be contained in the proposed districts." It stated that "New CD 16 (Renacci)" would include only 25.79% of Congresswoman Sutton's former district. Trial Ex. P130 (Sept. 14, 2011 email at LWVOH_00018321).
Dkt. 230-52 (Whatman Dep. at 34-35) ("There were early discussions, given the fact that we had two freshmen members of the delegation at that time, whether based on seniority it made sense that the two freshmen would have to run against each other, or whether some other consideration would come into play.").
Trial Ex. P407 (Sept. 07, 2011 email at LWVOH_0052431).
Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 16-19) (statement of Rep. Huffman).
Id. at 21.
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 179) ("If you look at the election data in terms of partisan performance, there's really not very much different in the two plans."); see also Trial Ex. P090 (Cooper Decl. at 22, fig. 9); Trial Ex. P454 (Cooper Decl. Apps. at Ex. I).
Dkt. 230-3 (Batchelder Dep. at 130-31).
Id. at 25.
As Ohio was never a covered jurisdiction under ยง 5 of the VRA, only ยง 2 compliance could be at issue for the State.
Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 17-18) (statement of Rep. Huffman).
Trial Ex. J03 (Ohio Senate Session, Sept. 21 2011 at 10) (statement of Sen. Faber).
Id. at 44 (statement of Sen. Faber) ("[T]he Supreme Court held that a majority-minority district that is drawn to remedy a [VRA ยง 2 violation], must be made up of a numerical majority of the voting age population in the district.... Minority population totals that are less than 50 percent of the district's voting age population do not fulfill the mandate of the Voting Rights Act.").
See id. at 58 (statement of Sen. Coley); id. at 60 (statement of Sen. Tavares); Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 39) (statement of Rep. Gerberry). Defendants cite statements from some members on the Democratic side of the aisle who also referenced the VRA. True enough, however, even though some referenced the VRA, not all agreed with how the Act was used in this case. See, e.g. , Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 40) (statement of Rep. Gerberry) ("[L]et's be honest. If you look at that map, this isn't about fairness. This is about finding a way to get the most Republican districts with the most Republicans so they're non-contestable in general elections."); id. at 59-60 (statement of Rep. Yuko) ("We now have Marcia Fudge representing us and [District 11 has not] missed a beat. This map puts it all at risk."). To the extent that Defendants rely on bipartisanship in this context, we address that justification elsewhere. See supra Section V.A.2.d.ii.
See Ohio Sec'y of State, 2002 Election Results , https://www.sos.state.oh.us/elections/election-results-and-data/2002-elections-results/u.s.-representative/; see supra Section II.C.4 (discussing Dr. Handley's testimony and report).
District 11's BVAP increased over the course of the decade to about 57%, but this does not alter the analysis. Again, the closest election was the 2002 election-which Stephanie Tubbs Jones won by over 50%-and the BVAP in that year was 52.3%.
Trial Ex. P070 (Testimony of Ray Miller to the Senate Select Committee on Redistricting). Notably, this request for a minority-opportunity district seems premised on a mistaken view of the VRA, too (i.e., that the VRA required such a district). Moreover, Miller's definition of a "minority opportunity district," included both a majority-minority district and a crossover district. See id.
Dkt. 241(Cooper Trial Test. at 161).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 10, 17).
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw Rep. at 14-15).
Trial Ex. P454 (Cooper Decl. Apps. at D-2); Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 160).
Dkt. 241 (Cooper Trial Test. at 161); Trial Ex. P454 (Cooper Decl. Apps. at E-2).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 10 & n.8, 17 & n.16).
Dkt. 247 (Hood Trial Test. at 155).
Id. at 199-200.
Id. at 156.
Dkt. 240 (Warshaw Trial Test. at 196).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 32).
See Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Supp. Rep. at 3).
Id. at 4.
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 21).
"From about 2002 through 2010 Republicans had a modest advantage in the efficiency gap in Ohio, perhaps because they controlled the redistricting in 2001." Id. at 22.
See generally Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 4-18); see also Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 5-6).
Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 7, 15).
Id. at 10, 17.
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 42).
See Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 3). An 8-8 map was also rather common, though by 2018, an 8-8 map occurred at about an equal rate as a 10-6 map. See id.
See generally id. at 4.
Id. at 3-4.
Trial Ex. P385 (Congressional Redistricting Talking Points at LWVOH_0052438).
See, e.g. , Trial Ex. P426 (Cho Suppl. Rep. at 6) (comparing the fundraising numbers of Democratic candidates in Districts 1 and 12 in the 2018 elections to the Republican incumbents).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 15).
Trial Ex. P476 (Warshaw 2018 Update at 12-13).
Trial Ex. P385 (Congressional Redistricting Talking Points at LWVOH_0052438).
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 36-37). This finding is consistent with what scholars and commentators started observing decades ago. See, e.g. , Elena Kagan, Presidential Administration ,
Trial Ex. P571 (Warshaw Rep. at 43); see also id. at 39-41; cf. 41 Cong. Globe , 41st Cong., 2d Sess., 4737 (June 23, 1870) (statement of Rep. James A. Garfield) (then-Representative Garfield speaking out against malapportionment in Ohio, stating, "There are about ten thousand Democratic voters in my district, and they have been voting there ... without any more hope of having a Representative on this floor than of having one in the Commons of Great Britain.... The Democratic voters in the nineteenth district of Ohio ought not by any system to be absolutely and permanently disenfranchised."); supra Section IV.C.
Trial Ex. J01 (Ohio House Session, Sept. 15, 2011 at 19) (statement of Rep. Huffman).
See Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 12-18).
See generally Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 4-18); Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 5-6). For example, the second hypothetical alternative map produces the following outcomes for 2012-2018, respectively: 10-6, 11-5, 11-5, and 8-8, and the number of competitive races range from three to five. See Trial Ex. P093 (Cooper Second Suppl. Decl. at 18); Trial Ex. P598 (Cooper Third Suppl. Decl. at 6).
Our analysis largely tracks that of the three-judge district court in League of Women Voters of Michigan v. Benson ,
Whether laches even applies to injunctive relief, which Plaintiffs seek, seems to be an open question. In Kay v. Austin , an election-law case, the Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiff was "not entitled to equitable relief in this instance as a result of laches."