Cecilia Scoon, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, speaks against the erasure of Congressional District 5 during a press conference at the Challenger Center in Tallahassee on Sept. 12, 2024. (Photo by Jackie Llanos/Florida Phoenix)
Florida Supreme Court justices indicated on Thursday that an anti-gerrymandering amendment in the Florida Constitution may contradict the U.S. Constitution, favoring the argument the state has used to defend quashing a former Black Congressional District in North Florida.
During oral arguments in Tallahassee, Christina Ford, representing petitioners Black Voters Matter, pleaded with the justices to declare unconstitutional the 2022 map that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the state Legislature, splitting the district that stretched from Jacksonville past Tallahassee, into white Republican-dominated districts.
Florida Chief Justice Carlos G. Muñiz via Florida Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz said the Florida Fair Districts Amendment (FDA), which prevents the diminishment of racial and language minority groups’ political power, made race a priority in the redistricting process. Voters enshrined that amendment in the state constitution in 2010.
“It seems like FDA kind of had this maybe unintended effect of constricting the allowable traditional redistricting criteria on the one hand and then, on the other hand, requiring that race be prioritized, which it seems like we’re just sort of setting up sort of a head-on conflict, or at least the possibility of a conflict, with the Equal Protection Clause just on its face,” Muñiz said.
2022 map gave Republicans more power
For years, CD 5, encompassing the state’s antebellum slavery belt, had elected Black Democratic Rep. Al Lawson, but the Legislature’s adherence to the DeSantis map gave Republicans 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts.
“There was over 100 years between Reconstruction, when Florida elected its first Black representative to Congress, and the Florida voters enacted the Fair Districts Amendment with that history in mind,” Ford said in court.
“And I think it is telling that the first time that the state decided that, you know, these provisions were not necessary, they eliminated a district that had elected a black candidate of choice for 30 years. We think there is an adequate record of discrimination in this case.”
Although Florida Circuit Court Judge Lee Marsh sided with the petitioners last year, the Florida First District Court of Appeal stepped in to overturn the decision, dismissing existing precedent from the Florida Supreme Court tending to favor Lawson’s district.
DeSantis prevails in quashing Black congressional district, but U.S. judge sees a racial motive
Attorneys representing the Legislature and Florida’s secretary of state argued in court Thusday that the previous shape of the district amounted to racial gerrymandering under the Equal Protection Clause because it grouped Black populations in an area that was not compact.
“This is a district that divides Leon County and Tallahassee on the basis of race. It divides Florida A&M University from Florida State University. There’s no nonracial grounds for a configuration like this,” said Daniel Nordby, an attorney representing the Legislature.
But Ford asked the justices to ignore the state’s equal-protection claims, arguing it was premature since there isn’t an alternative map that the court is considering. Justice John Daniel Couriel disagreed.
“I think from a Supremacy Clause standpoint, you probably concede that we would have to adhere to the Equal Protection obligation first, wouldn’t we?” Couriel said.
No guarantee
Justice John D. Couriel is the 90th Justice on the Florida Supreme Court. Credit: FL Supreme Court website.
He bashed what he called “judicially created doctrines” protecting groups’ political power.
“I guess what I’m getting at is as a matter of first principles, if we’re going to sort of go down to the studs, can we agree as a matter of first principle that both under the Florida Constitution and under the U.S. Constitution, it is ultimately an individual’s right to vote that is at issue, not a group’s right to vote?” Couriel said.
“I go into a polling place. I go in by myself,” he added.
During a press conference the petitioners held following the oral arguments, Cecilia Scoon, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, another plainiff organization, said that at its core redistricting is about communities.
“One-person-one-vote is a very powerful and fundamental aspect of our jurisprudence and our whole voting system but, when it comes to redistricting, by definition, that is a group issue,” Scoon said.
“By definition, it goes from one-person-one-vote to communities and districts of interest. So, by definition, you go away from the one premise of one-person-one vote into how are communities impacted. And are they able to select a representative that will meet their needs.”
Court criticism of state arguments
Muñiz also criticized the arguments from the secretary of state’s attorney, Henry Whitaker. The chief justice said Whitaker was overcomplicating the case by asking the justices to consider the U.S. Supreme Court’s established criterion for proving racial vote delusion under the Voting Rights Act: that a group must be large and compact enough to constitute a majority in a single district.
The state focused its defense on the width of the district, saying it wasn’t compact enough.
“Whatever we say in this case is going to be, you know, the Legislature is going to be stuck with having to deal with that and everybody who cares about redistricting going forward,” Muñiz said. “And it seems like we should try to keep this as clean as possible. Not to mention that it seems like we’re sort of bouncing back and forth with how much is the [Voting Rights Act] a baseline or not.”
Although the court, primarily composed of DeSantis-appointed justices, has dismissed its own precedents in the past, the petitioners are counting on the justices to adhere to the previous court opinions upholding the diminishment clause of the Fair Districts Amendment. (For example, the justices gave way to the six-week abortion ban in April after deciding that the privacy clause in the state constitution didn’t apply to abortions, as an earlier court declared in 1989.)
“We can do nothing but be optimistic that the court will rule and follow precedent and give us a fair shake before the court,” said Genesis Robinson, interim executive director for the Equal Ground Education Fund, another plaintiff organization.
“Obviously, it is not lost on us that the governor had a significant role in appointing several other justices before the court, but that does not preclude them from following the law.”
The court won’t rule on the matter before the November election.