Black Democrats and other party members disrupted debate over Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed congressional redistricting map on April 21, 2022. (Photo by Michael Moline/Florida Phoenix
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A lawsuit filed by the ACLU Foundation of Florida asks a federal judge to invalidate four congressional districts and seven state House districts on the ground that they represent unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
In a 38-page complaint filed last week, the organization argues the Legislature grouped diverse populations of Hispanic Americans into unwieldy districts, treating them as a monolithic group based on ethnic stereotyping.
“South Florida’s Hispanic community is not politically cohesive … ,” the complaint asserts.
“Rather, it is nuanced, multifaceted, and diverse with respect to political behavior and preferences. But in crafting the challenged districts, the Legislature ignored this diversity and assumed that Hispanic voters in South Florida were politically homogenous and monolithic. This assumption was false. The Legislature was not entitled to draw race-based districts based on uninformed assumptions of racial sameness,” the document says.
These are the state House districts being challenged in an ACLU lawsuit. Source: ACLU brief
The complaint asks the court to declare the districts unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, enjoin the state from using them to run elections, and order special elections if the state uses the map during the November elections — as seems likely given that Florida’s primary elections are set for Aug. 20.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra in Miami, who joined the court in February. The defendants are the Florida House of Representatives and Cord Byrd, Florida’s Secretary of State.
“As a proud Cuban American, I’m standing up for my community and against the politicians who are suppressing our diverse voices through racial gerrymandering,” Michael Rivero, co-founder of Cubanos Pa’lante and an individual plaintiff in the case, said in a written statement.
“From my native Miami to my current home in Southwest Florida, these maps divide cohesive communities and lump other distinct areas together in districts that just plain don’t make sense,” Rivero said.
Other challenges
Additional challenges have been filed against the redistricting plans that emerged following the 2020 U.S. Census. In one, a three-judge federal trial panel upheld a map, which Gov. Ron DeSantis forced the Legislature to accept, that erased a Black-controlled congressional district in North Florida. Plaintiffs Common Cause Florida, FairDistricts Now, the Florida State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Branches, and 10 individual voters have asked the court to reconsider.
These are the congressional districts being challenged in an ACLU lawsuit. Source: ACLU brief
A separate challenge to that map is pending before the Florida Supreme Court. A third lawsuit, this one in federal court, accuses the Legislature of packing Black voters into a Senate district spanning Tampa Bay to favor white control of a neighboring Senate district.
Cubanos Pa’lante is a progressive Cuban-American nonprofit and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Other plaintiffs are Engage Miami, representing “largely Gen Z and Millennial Black and Latino residents of Miami-Dade County,” according to the complaint; the ACLU Club at Florida International University; and five individual members of various Hispanic American communities.
The complaint alleges violations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which “prohibits redistricting in which race predominates, subordinating traditional, race-neutral redistricting considerations to racial decision-making.”
Causes of action
The document cites Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which bars dilution of minority votes when “the political process is not ‘equally open’ to minority voters” and “the minority group is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district; the minority group is politically cohesive; and the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.”
And it cites the Florida Constitution’s Fair Districts Amendments, which was modeled after the VRA and which bans partisan gerrymandering and drawing districts that diminish minority voting power. The provision requires that districts “be drawn as nearly equal in population as is practicable; be compact; and where feasible, utilize existing political and geographical boundaries,” the complaint says. But those requirements are secondary to respect for minorities’ ability to elect candidates of their choosing.
The complaint challenges congressional districts 19, 26, 27, and 28 and state House districts 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, and 119.
Legal precedents allow using race to guide redistricting only if narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest.
“These prerequisites include that the minority group is politically cohesive and the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate,” the complaint says.
Those preconditions were absent when the Legislature drew the districts, the document continues. For example, different Hispanic communities differ strongly on political priorities, and whites have voted in sympathy with Hispanics more often than not, it says.
Hispanic cohesion
“The Legislature was on notice — but ignored — that the … preconditions were absent. Prior court decisions and published scholarship revealed a lack of Hispanic voting cohesion, and during legislative sessions on redistricting, individual legislators questioned leadership about their assumptions of Hispanic voting cohesion and white bloc voting,” the complaint asserts.
“These seats form noncompact shapes, connect disparate neighborhoods, and divide established communities. In drawing these districts, the Florida Legislature subordinated traditional redistricting criteria and state constitutional requirements to race without narrowly tailoring the district lines to advance a compelling government interest. This racial gerrymandering unconstitutionally abridges plaintiffs’ rights to the equal protection of the laws,” it says.
“Plaintiffs are further harmed because the enacted plans split up their communities and group their communities with dissimilar ones, simply because of their race. If the enacted plans are not enjoined, these individuals and the members of Cubanos Pa’lante, Engage Miami, and the FIU ACLU Club will be harmed by living and voting in unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts,” the complaint says.
“Congressional District 26 stretches 100 miles across the Everglades from Biscayne Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, scooping up diverse Latino communities from Hialeah to Immokalee. One glance tells you it’s gerrymandered,” said Enrique Cruz, president of the ACLU Club at FIU, citing one example of an allegedly flawed district.
“We’re going to court because the Latino community deserves better than racially gerrymandered districts that slice through communities and deny representation,” Cruz added.
“These maps determine whether we are fairly represented in Tallahassee and D.C.,” said Rebecca Pelham, executive director of Engage Miami. “We will keep fighting until we have fair maps.”
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