Florida city highlights conflicts over local gerrymandering
>> Not far from the postcard images of Jacksonville — the white sand beaches, the riverfront fountain, the upscale shopping district — is another side of the city.
Here, neighborhood roads are pitted with potholes and sometimes unpaved. Weeds swallow abandoned cars in empty lots. Grocery stores are sparse.
The people who live in this other Jacksonville are mostly Black, and many of them lay blame for their neighborhoods' lack of services on the city's politics. They point to a lack of representation resulting in part from the way the districts have been drawn for the city council, the decision-making body for Jacksonville's 950,000 residents.
“It's about diluting Black representation, Black power and change that needs to happen in the Black community,” said Moné Holder, a city resident who holds a leadership role at Florida Rising, a local voting rights group that focuses on communities of color. “Others may tell a different story as to why it is, but we see it in the lack of resources that go into those communities.”
A group of Jacksonville residents and local civil rights organizations sued the city last year, alleging that the council's redistricting maps packed Black communities into four of the 19 council districts, five of which are at-large.
A U.S. district court judge last fall ruled in their favor and ordered the maps redrawn. Advocates said the city returned with more of the same, and in December the same court ordered that a map proposed by the advocates be used for Jacksonville's elections this spring.
“There's just naturally an incentive to keep things the same, and that's what you saw in the Jacksonville process,” said Nick Warren, staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida.
The council argued in its court filings that the advocates' latest plan would be the third council map in less than a year and would “cause voter confusion and
undermine voter confidence.” The court rejected the appeal in early January, so voters will be casting ballots in new council districts for the city's March elections.
The fight over how Jacksonville's districts are drawn reflects an aspect of redistricting that often remains in the shadows. Redistricting for congressional and state legislative boundaries captures wide attention after new census numbers are released every 10 years, as the two major
political parties seek mapmaking advantages that will help them retain or regain power at the federal or state level — a process known as gerrymandering.
No less fierce are the battles over the way voting lines are drawn in local governments, for city councils, county commissions and even school boards.
Conflicts over local redistricting erupted into public view late last year when a leaked audiotape revealed how Latino members of the Los Angeles City Council
were plotting to gerrymander council districts in a way that would boost political power for their community at the expense of traditionally Black ones.
The exchange was punctuated with racist and graphic language and has widened racial fissures within the city, led the state Department of Justice to announce an investigation and prompted a legislative effort to remove the council's redistricting power.
“Self-interest should not be the deciding factor,” said the bill's sponsor, Democratic state Sen. María Elena Durazo. “It should be the Voting Rights Act, the California Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.”
When the city was going through the redistricting process, Los Angeles City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson recalled bringing up topics important to his constituents related to what he termed the “One Black district” but said he was ignored.
“Now I understand that that was on purpose,” he said.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling a decade ago gutting a section of the federal Voting Rights Act gave state and local governments tremendous freedom to change voting procedures and to redraw political boundaries, even if redistricting was done in a way that diluted the voting power of minority communities. Previously, some states and local governments were required to get approval from the Justice Department before making significant voting-related changes.
The gerrymandering for local government bodies receives far less attention than congressional or state legislative gerrymandering, in part because few local groups have the money and expertise to bring lawsuits against what they perceive as unfair maps.
Jacksonville is an exception. Local branches of the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union teamed up with community civil rights groups to challenge the maps the City Council approved in March 2022.