A Leon County circuit judge Saturday ruled that a congressional redistricting plan pushed through the Legislature by Gov. Ron DeSantis violated the Florida Constitution and needs to be redrawn.
Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh sided with voting-rights groups in a lawsuit focused on a North Florida district that in the past elected Black Democrat Al Lawson but was dramatically revamped during the 2022 redistricting process. White Republicans won all North Florida congressional districts in the November elections.
Florida voters in 2010 approved a constitutional amendment, known as the Fair Districts amendment, that set standards for redistricting. Part of that barred drawing districts that would “diminish” the ability of minorities to “elect representatives of their choice.”
“Under the stipulated facts (in the lawsuit), plaintiffs have shown that the enacted plan results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida Constitution,” Marsh wrote.
Marsh ordered that the issue return to the Legislature “to enact a remedial map in compliance” with the state Constitution. The ruling, however, is expected to be appealed.
“This is a significant victory in the fight for fair representation for Black Floridians,” Olivia Mendoza, director of litigation and policy for the National Redistricting Foundation, an affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. “As a result, the current discriminatory map should be replaced with a map that restores the Fifth Congressional District in a manner that gives Black voters the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.”
Attorneys for the Florida House, Senate and Secretary of State Cord Byrd argued during a hearing last month that the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause prevented using a district similar to the district Lawson held because it would involve racial gerrymandering.
The disputed district, Congressional District 5, in the past stretched from Jacksonville to Gadsden County, west of Tallahassee, incorporating areas that had large Black populations. The 2022 plan put the district in the Jacksonville area.
But Marsh wrote that the state had not proven gerrymandering.
DeSantis cited the equal-protection issue as he effectively took control of the congressional redistricting process last year. He vetoed a plan passed by the Legislature and called a special session that ultimately led to a map that helped lead in the November elections to Florida Republicans increasing their number of U.S. House members from 16 to 20.
While the case initially addressed other districts, attorneys for the plaintiffs and the state last month agreed to narrow it to Congressional District 5. In the agreement, the state acknowledged that “if the non-diminishment standard applies to North Florida, then there is no Black-performing district in North Florida under the enacted map.”
But the state maintained “that the Equal Protection Clause would nonetheless prohibit the creation of a Black-performing district in North Florida.”
–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida
Jane Gentile-Youd says
Great ruling. Thanks Judge.
would vote no says
Why does our Governor put into action instead of letting his constituents vote?? Ask yourself….
Jim says
Seems a lot of Ron’s actions don’t stand up to court challenges! That may be because Ron and his minions are much less interested in following the law than they are in pushing their own agenda knowing that it takes time for the legal process to work through the courts and in the meantime, the damage has been done. This is not democracy – it’s autocratic at best and fascist at worst.
I’m glad he’s collapsing on the national stage. His true self is there for all to see. It’ll be fun to watch him slink back to Florida to serve out his term. I doubt he’ll have much political future after that. Who is looking for a guy with no personality and no friends??
I hope this country (actually this state) can return to some level of fairness and equality after this guy is gone.
richard says
I had Ron DeSantis pegged for the autocrat that he is, pandering to white supremacists and suppressing the black vote, from the moment he uttered these racist dog-whistle words in his original gubernatorial run against Andrew Gillum on August 29, 2018″ “Let’s not monkey this up.” He is who he is, and no amount of dissembling, evading, or even his head-wagging, eye-rolling,and shrugging will change that.
mell says
Constituents DID vote on it. “Florida voters in 2010 approved a constitutional amendment, known as the Fair Districts amendment”
The previous district was a joke and so are any complaints that draw a district incorporating a town/city/borough that’s actually local. If Flaglerlive had an ounce of integrity, they’d show a picture of the original district next to the one they have now, and let readers decide which one made more damn sense.
Dave says
I guess Ronny forgot all about this. In November 2010, the voters added amendments to the State Constitution in Article III, Sections 20 and 21. These Amendments prohibit line-drawing that intentionally favors or disfavors a political party or an incumbent. The Amendments also afford protection to racial and language minorities. Districts may not be drawn (1) with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process; or (2) to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice. Finally, unless it would conflict with the standards described above, the Amendments require that district populations be as nearly equal as practicable, and that districts be compact and, where feasible, follow existing political and geographical boundaries.
JimBob says
Yeah, we definitely don’t want “THEM” electing Congressmen, do we Mell?
Ban the GOP says
racist republicans making racist maps and policies. Big surprise! Dont worry they already stacked the state and federal supreme courts so it will likely get reinstated or racist ron will go after that judge.
Deborah Coffey says
To have integrity, one needs truth…and facts.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/florida-judge-strikes-down-desantis-congressional-map-for-diminishing-black-voting-power-in-north-florida/#:~:text=Under%20the%20Fair%20Districts%20Amendment's,to%20elect%20their%20preferred%20candidate.
Skibum says
DeSantis and the FL legislators who are part of this determined and underhanded effort to dilute the will and voting power of black citizens of this state might as well all break out their white robes and march through the streets of Tallahassee after dark carrying torches. They are no better than the KKK of the past. The main difference is that they are statewide elected officials who are “supposed” to working for the benefit of ALL Floridians. Who do they think they are kidding. What is happening in this state is that the FL GOP is working to transform this state into another Alabama, and I don’t have any faith at all that the state Supreme Court will do anything to disrupt their efforts, so it is likely that the federal courts may have to step in and put a stop to the blatant and unconstitutional redistricting just like what has been going on in Alabama for the better part of an entire century.
Ed says
Not weighing in on process, but as Mell posted- look at the old map of the district compared to new map. The old district stretches and winds around like a snake. It appears it was the definition of gerrymandering for the purpose of creating a “special” district.
It stretched from Jacksonville to Tallahassee.
Just look at maps.
I was surprised.
palmcoaster says
Prejudice and totalitarianism in FL is currently obvious.
Ray W. says
Hello Skibum.
I argue that the Florida GOP is not trying to transform America into another Alabama of the 1950’s, but rather into a Virginia and the Carolinas of the 17th and 18th centuries, based on a “hegemonic liberty” tradition.
I have quoted from David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, Oxford University Press (1989), in other comments.
Fischer’s historical work focuses on four different migration patterns into the American colonies prior to the Revolution. Each of the four migrations carried with it a “liberty tradition” unique to the regiion in Great Britain from which it originated.
One of those four migrations came from a particular region in England, a migration that Fischer termed the Cavalier tradition. The Cavaliers migrated to Virginia and the Carolinas. Fischer characterized the migrants as carrying with them a “hegemonic liberty” tradition.
Fischer writes of this hegemonic liberty tradition as follows:
“In Thompson’s poetry, which captured the world view of the Virginians in so many ways, we find the major components of hegemonic liberty; the concept of a ‘right to rule’; the notion that this right was guaranteed by the ‘charter of the land’; the belief that those who surrendered this right became ‘slaves’; and the idea that it had been given to ‘Britain first, at heaven’s command.’
“It never occurred to most Virginia gentlemen that liberty belonged to everyone. It was thought to be the special birthright of free-born Englishmen — a property which set this ‘happy breed’ apart from other mortals, and gave them the right to rule less fortunate people in the world. Even within their own society, hegemonic liberty was a hierarchical idea. One’s status in Virginia was defined by the liberties one possessed. Men of high estate were thought to have more liberties than others of lesser rank. Servants possessed few liberties, and slaves none at all. This libertarian idea had nothing to do with equality. Many years later, John Randolph of Roanoke summarized his ancestral creed in a sentence: ‘I am an aristocrat’, he declared. ‘I love liberty; I hate equality.’
“In Virginia, this idea of hegemonic liberty was thought to be entirely consistent with the institution of race slavery. A planter demanded for himself the liberty to take away the liberties of others — a right of laisser asservir, freedom to enslave. The growth of race slavery in turn deepened the cultural significance of hegemonic liberty, for an Englishman’s rights became his rank, and set him apart from others less fortunate than himself. The world thus became a hierarchy in which people were ranked according to many degrees of unfreedom, and they received their rank by the operation of fortune, which played so large a part in the thinking of Virginians. At the same time, hegemony over others allowed them to enlarge the sphere of their own personal liberty, and to create the conditions within which their special sort of libertarian consciousness flourished.
“To a modern mind, hegemonic liberty is an idea at war with itself. We think of it as a contradiction in terms. This is because we no longer understand human relationships in hierarchical terms, and can no longer accept the proposition that a person’s status in the world is determined and even justified by his fortune. But in Virginia during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and throughout much of the American south until 1865, this idea of hegemonic liberty was entirely in harmony with its environing culture.
“One acute English observer in the eighteenth century clearly perceived the special meaning of hegemonic liberty in what he called the ‘southern colonies.’ Edmund Burke declared in Parliament:
‘a circumstance attending these colonies … makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas, they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.
‘Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks amongst them like something that is more noble and liberal.
‘I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of the sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward. . . . In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.’
“Burke understood very well this system of hegemonic liberty in Virginia — perhaps because it was also shared by so many English gentlemen in the eighteenth century. He correctly perceived that liberty in Virginia was both a right and a rank, with a good deal of ‘pride’ in it, and many contradictions. He also understood that this conception of hegemonic liberty contained larger possibilities which could expand in years to come.” (pgs. 412-414) (As an aside, many true conservatives consider Burke to be one of the early great conservative leaders of the overall movement.)
I ask you, Skibum, to consider the following possible arguments:
1. When Governor DeSantis speaks of a Free Florida, is he doing so in the hegemonic liberty tradition of the Virginia Cavaliers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the sense that possessing certain freedoms allows those who possess them to exclude from or place limits on other people’s freedoms?
2. Is his modern Florida version of the hegemonic liberty tradition based on a belief that he possesses a “right to rule” based upon “fortune”, and that his rank entitles him to rule all others whom he perceives as possessing a lesser rank?
3. Does Governor DeSantis view us all according to his perceptions of rank, and that those whom he perceives as servants should possess fewer liberties, and those whom he perceives of being of high rank should possess the most liberties?
4. Does Governor DeSantis love liberty and hate equality?
Ray W. says
Is it possible that you are looking at the issue backwards?
That after the 2010 census, the Florida legislature just might have gerrymandered the congressional districts throughout the state in a way to create as many Republican seats as possible, despite the voters adopting a Fair Districts amendment, and that a leftover district would stretch from Tallahassee to Jacksonville in a circuitous route?
That after the 2020 census, and after much court argument over the earlier redistricting effort, and in light of a perceived more receptive Florida and U.S. Supreme Court makeup, the Florida legislature then engineered an even more favorable Republican gerrymandering effort (four additional Republican representatives sent to Washington) and redrew that one leftover district into a far more compact one that favored an additional Republican seat?
That you are not seeing the forest for the trees?
Remember, you must allow reason to lead you to wherever it ends, instead of contorting reason to fit a preconceived outcome.
You are arguing that you were surprised by seeing the shape of one (1) gerrymandered district, instead of writing of being surprised about all the other 2010 gerrymandered districts that required the unique shape of the one district, so as to fit as many minorities into it as possible so that the other districts would be more solidly Republican.
richard says
Hey Ray, what do you say? I thought that I was the only one who read David Hackett Fischer’s majesterial study, “Albion’s Seed.” I see that I am in good company. He is spot-on. When I was in grad school, 50 years ago, we were treated to Fischer’s “Historians’ Fallacies.” I remember trying to follow his advice when writing my grad papers; unfortunately, my profs were not devotees — of Fischer or of my papers. One prof told me to drop out and find something else to do in life. I forgot to take his advice, and so I was condemned and sentenced to teach college history for 25 years. Oh well. I just re-read Fischer’s Fallacies book, and I marveled at the absolute breadth of his reading on all subjects; he is witty, ironic, sometimes sardonic, but he is always teaching me something I never thought of before. And that book was published in 1969, 20 years earlier than Albion’s Seed. His latest work is African Founders, published in 2022. I can’t wait to read that one and study it. For one thing, he enriches my vocabulary — and I think of myself as a wordsmith in my own right (or is it write? :-) ). For another, at his advanced age, he is still in command and at the top of his game. When I grow up, Iwant to be even a little bit like DH Fischer.
Ray W. says
Yes, richard, Fischer amazes with his ability to synthesize so much material in such a pleasurable way. Perhaps the only other historian who did so, at least in my estimation, was Shelby Foote in his great three volume set on the Civil War. How could anyone filter the records of four years of war, millions of combatants, thousands of battles, hundreds of campaigns, dozens of generals and two presidents into a coherent and readable whole? Yet Foote did it all.
You hit upon the key to all great literature, which is an author’s capacity to teach us things in a way we have never thought about before. Every page a mystery to be unraveled. Every sentence a possible revelation. Every word a potential epiphany.
Thank you.