Sendai: Sendai High Court ruled Tuesday that Japan’s House of Councillors election in July was unconstitutional in terms of vote-value disparity.

It is the first ruling that the July 10 election for the upper chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament, was held in violation of the Constitution.

Presiding Judge Hisaki Kobayashi, however, dismissed the plaintiffs’ demand for the invalidation of the results of the Upper House poll, in which the maximum vote-value disparity stood at 3.03 times.

The ruling by the court in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, was the eighth handed down among 16 lawsuits over the election’s constitutionality, filed by two groups of lawyers with 14 high courts and high court branches across the country.

The groups claim that the Upper House election violated the Constitution, which calls for the equality of votes.

Before the latest verdict, four rulings found that the election was held in a state of unconstitutionality while three rulings concluded that the poll was constitutional.

JIJI Press