Court urged to reject redistricting map
Voting groups argue appeals court ruling ignored precedent
TALLAHASSEE — Alleging an “egregious misreading of Florida’s Constitution,” voting-rights groups late Wednesday argued the state Supreme Court should overturn a decision that upheld a congressional redistricting plan pushed through the Legislature by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Lawyers for the groups filed a brief contending that the 1st District Court of Appeal on Dec. 1 disregarded Supreme Court precedents when it backed the redistricting plan.
The dispute centers on a 2022 plan that overhauled a North Florida district that in the past elected Black Democrat Al Lawson and on a 2010 state constitutional amendment that prohibited drawing districts that would diminish the ability of minorities to “elect representatives of their choice.”
After the district was overhauled, white Republicans won all North Florida congressional districts in the 2022 elections.
“This is a straightforward case that calls for a straightforward application of this (Supreme) Court’s precedent,” the brief said. “There is no dispute that Florida’s enacted plan diminishes the voting power of Black Floridians in North Florida. There is no dispute that under this (Supreme) Court’s prior precedent that diminishment violates the Florida Constitution.”
The Supreme Court said in January it would take up the case. The state now has 30 days to file an initial brief.
The Supreme Court has not said when it will hear arguments. On Feb. 12 it denied a request from the plaintiffs to speed up the handling of the case and hold arguments during the first week of April. That means the disputed plan likely will remain in effect for this year’s elections, as congressional candidates qualify from April 22-26.
DeSantis in 2022 vetoed a congressional redistricting plan passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and muscled through a replacement that included revamping the disputed Congressional District 5.
That district, used in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections, stretched from Jacksonville to Gadsden County, west of Tallahassee, and incorporated areas with sizable Black populations.
DeSantis argued that keeping such a district would be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
But the voting-rights groups, including the League of Women Voters of Florida and Equal Ground Education Fund, and other plaintiffs challenged the 2022 redistricting plan, focusing on what is known as the “non-diminishment” clause in the 2010 state constitutional amendment known as Fair Districts.
Leon Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh agreed with the plaintiffs that the redistricting plan violated the Fair Districts amendment. But the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected that decision in December.
The appeals court’s main opinion said protection offered under the non-diminishment clause and under the federal Voting Rights Act “is of the voting power of ‘a politically cohesive, geographically insular minority group.” It said linking voters across a large stretch of North Florida did not meet such a definition of cohesiveness.
The plaintiffs’ brief cited Florida Supreme Court decisions in 2015 that led to the district that elected Lawson.
It said the “Florida Constitution expressly prohibits redistricting plans that diminish minority voters’ ability to elect representatives of their choice.”