A group of African-American Youngstown voters filed a federal lawsuit seeking to invalidate the results of the primaries for the 6th Congressional District and any district that touches it, saying the U.S. House map violates the Voting Rights Act and disregards racial demographics.

The group is asking the court to grant a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction and for a special master to be appointed to “assume control of the Ohio redistricting process.”

The group also wants the court to certify the group as a class action and to request the chief judge of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to create a three-member panel for the case.

The lawsuit states the congressional redistricting plan “dilutes black voter strength by separating Mahoning and Trumbull counties and by submerging Mahoning (County) black voters into a racially polarized voting district 165 miles long comprised of 10 counties, which results in the political processes leading to election of representatives of choice not being equally open to plaintiffs” in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

The 14th Amendment grants equal civil and legal rights to African Americans to include them under the phrase “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” while the 15th Amendment states that citizens’ right to vote shall not be denied for race or color. Both were ratified shortly after the end of the Civil War. The VRA, approved in 1965, prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color or language.

The group is proposing a congressional district of Mahoning and Trumbull counties along with “more racially diverse adjacent Stark, Summit or Cuyahoga counties.”

In its initial lawsuit filed in December, the group objected to a congressional district that put Mahoning and Trumbull together with eight southern counties — saying it “will result in illegal and unconstitutional dilution of the black vote” in Youngstown.

Those districts were later changed March 2 by the redistricting commission after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. Mahoning was kept in the new 6th District with largely those same southern counties in the first map. Trumbull was put in a new 14th District with counties to its north and west.

MAY 3 PRIMARY

The plaintiffs in this case are the Rev. Kenneth L. Simon, senior pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Youngstown and chairman of the Community Mobilization Committee; Helen Youngblood, a community activist and former labor leader who is chairwoman of the Mahoning Valley 1619 Project; and the Rev. Lewis W. Macklin II, lead pastor of Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church.

The Youngstown group lawsuit seeks to invalidate the results of the May 3 primary in the 6th Congressional District and the three districts, including the 14th, that touch it.

The Ohio Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the constitutionality of the second congressional map, but the primary for those seats is ongoing. The court briefing schedule for that map is after the May 3 primary.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose ordered the map be used for the May 3 primary because he considers it valid unless a court decides otherwise. A decision on the congressional map won’t happen before the May 3 primary.

A three-member federal panel in the Southern District of Ohio could decide to impose state legislative maps as early as today for a possible Aug. 2 primary for those seats or continue to defer to the Ohio Supreme Court. The state court last week rejected state legislative maps for the fourth time saying they were unconstitutional because they unfairly favor Republicans.

REJECTED ONCE

That three-member federal panel in the Southern District, hearing a case regarding state legislative maps, rejected a request April 12 from the same group of Youngstown voters to invalidate the results of all of the ongoing congressional primaries saying the request “exceeds the scope of their intervention.”

The judges suggested the Youngstown group file for a temporary restraining order in the Northern District of Ohio, where it originally filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Redistricting Commission over congressional and state legislative maps as well as objections to Mahoning County using at large elections. Youngstown is located in the Northern District.

When the group initially filed the lawsuit last December, the commission hadn’t voted on a congressional map but has since done so. The commission has nothing to do with how Mahoning County handles its elections.

The group voluntarily had the case in the Northern District dismissed March 22 after Judge John R. Adams postponed it to let the state legislative redistricting process continue.

In the refiled lawsuit, the group focused only on congressional maps though some language similar to the previous lawsuit is used in this one that refers to the two other issues.

Percy Squire is the plaintiffs’ attorney. He was involved in the successful 1991 lawsuit to create a Youngstown-focused state House district to give African-Americans an opportunity to hold that seat.

Sylvester Patton of Youngstown, an African-American, served in that seat for 10 years until the end of 2006. He was succeeded by Robert F. Hagan and then Hagan’s wife, Michele Lepore-Hagan, who are both white and Youngstown residents. Lepore-Hagan’s term expires at the end of this year.