Tampa residents challenge state map
Lawsuit alleges Florida Senate districts dilute power of Black vote
TALLAHASSEE — More than two years after lawmakers redrew the state’s legislative maps, a group of Tampa Bay-area residents have challenged the constitutionality of two Senate districts they say dilute the power of Black voters.
Attorneys for five residents of Tampa and St. Petersburg filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tampa on Wednesday alleging that Senate District 16 and Senate District 18 are gerrymandered and violate constitutional equal-protection rights.
District 16, represented by Sen. Daryl Rouson, a Black Democrat from St. Petersburg, crosses Tampa Bay to include parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. White Republican Nick DiCeglie of Indian Rocks Beach represents District 18, made up of part of Pinellas County.
“The state drew these districts purportedly to avoid diminishing Black voters’ ability to elect representatives of their choice in District 16, but the state unnecessarily used race to disregard traditional, race-neutral redistricting considerations,” the lawsuit said. “And far from advancing representation, the enacted districts dilute Black voters’ power. The state could have drawn these districts to both avoid the diminishment of Black voting power and respect traditional redistricting criteria. Instead, the state engaged in racial gerrymandering that unconstitutionally abridges plaintiffs’ rights to the equal protection of the laws.”
Lawmakers gave final approval to the redistricting plan in February 2022, and the districts were used in the 2022 elections. Rouson received 63.9% of the vote in District 16, while DiCeglie received 56.9% in District 18. Neither seat is slated to be on this year’s ballot.
Senate President Pro Tempore Dennis Baxley, R-Eustis, sent a memo Wednesday to senators that said it “goes without saying that the Senate will vigorously defend the unanimously approved work product of this body.”
“As you are aware, this map was approved by the Senate with unanimous support in February 2022,” Baxley wrote to senators. “Subsequently, the map was submitted to the Florida Supreme Court and declared constitutional, again unanimously, more than two years ago. Opposing groups have ample opportunity to bring forward challenges prior to enactment and as part of the Supreme Court review process, yet the plaintiffs played no role in opposing the map at that time. In fact, no group opposed the Senate map during that review process.”
The lawsuit came after a threejudge federal panel last month rejected a constitutional challenge to a congressional redistricting plan that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the Legislature in 2022.
A state appeals court also rejected a separate challenge to the congressional plan, though an appeal of that decision is pending at the Florida Supreme Court.
While the congressional redistricting plan has long been controversial, the Senate map has drawn relatively little attention. Before it passed in 2022, then-Senate Reapportionment Chairman Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, said his committee sought to avoid mistakes from a past redistricting effort, when the Supreme Court tossed initial congressional and Senate maps.