A Florida judge struck down the state’s congressional map on Saturday, ruling that it violated the Florida Constitution.
The judge’s decision centered around a Florida State constitutional Amendment approved by voters in 2010. It is called the Fair District Amendment. It establishes constitutional limits on political gerrymandering. The Florida Constitution now contains standards for the legislature to follow when redrawing district lines:
Under the Fair Districts provision approved by voters, districts can’t be formulated in a manner that would “diminish” the opportunity for minority voters to select a candidate of their choice.
In a 55-page ruling, Judge J. Lee Marsh of the Leon County Circuit Court ruled that lawmakers had violated that prohibition with the new maps they drew after the 2020 census.
Here’s what happened, according to Business Insider: Last year, before the 2022 midterm elections, in order to come up with a map that heavily favored the GOP, DeSantis inserted himself into the redistricting process by vetoing a map drawn by the Republican-led legislature that had preserved existing districts represented by Black Democrats.
But with DeSantis making a run for the presidency in 2024, he had to change the map, so he submitted his own map that lawmakers approved in a special session that DeSantis called.
At issue in the ruling was an area previously mapped as House District 5, which stretched from Jacksonville to Tallahassee along Florida’s northern border with Georgia.
The district has a voting population of about 46 percent Black and had elected Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections. You could say District 5 is racially polarized, with Black residents mostly voting for Democrats and white residents mostly voting for Republicans, according to the New York Times.
In the DeSantis map, District 5 was divided into four districts whose voting populations ranged from about 13 percent to about 32 percent Black. In 2022, all four districts elected a white Republican, one of whom defeated Mr. Lawson in the process.
“Under the enacted plan in 2022, North Florida did not elect a Black member of Congress for the first time since 1990,” Judge Marsh wrote in his ruling, in a list of facts that weren’t disputed by either side.
Under the ruling, Florida is forbidden to use the unconstitutional map in the 2024 election, and state legislators are required to draw a new map that does not diminish Black Floridians’ voting power.
Seeing as this was a lower court ruling, you can bet the bank DeSantis’s people are going to appeal. The case could end up before the Florida Supreme Court, which is controlled by appointees of Mr. DeSantis and could reverse the ruling.
