A new voting map that reshapes congressional representation for Central Florida is continuing to draw criticism, and litigation, from voters and voting groups.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Central Florida Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials blasted the new map as blatantly unconstitutional.
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Orlando, joined local elected officials and state lawmakers in front of City Hall to warn that a U.S. Supreme Court decision weakening protections for minority voting districts could make it harder for Black communities to be represented in Congress.
The founder of the social justice group Equal Ground, Jasmine Burney-Clark, also spoke at Tuesday’s event. Her organization is suing over the new map, alleging it violates the state constitution.
Two new suits have been filed against the new map since the Equal Ground complaint was filed Monday afternoon. All of them allege violations of voter-backed redistricting protections enshrined in the state constitution.
A controversial process
The new district map that lawmakers approved last week gives Republicans advantages in half of the state’s eight congressional seats currently held by Democrats. That means the GOP is favored in 24 of the state’s 28 congressional seats — more than 85%.
Officials from the Governor’s Office who drew the new map ignored the Fair Districts Amendments to the state constitution that Florida voters overwhelmingly adopted in 2010.
Those amendments forbid partisan gerrymandering, and include protections for “majority-minority” districts that mirror similar protections codified in the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Governor’s Office has explained that it believes that all of the amendments’ protections are invalid as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that severely limited a key protection in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
That protection allows race to be a consideration — though not the only consideration — when drawing congressional maps, to ensure that historically disenfranchised communities are able to elect representatives of their choice.
The Supreme Court’s ruling last week significantly raised the standard for considering race in congressional maps federally, sparking interest in last-minute redistricting among many Southern states. Those limits also apply to the protections in Florida’s constitution.
In defending Florida’s new map, DeSantis is saying that the Fair Districts Amendments, when adopted, did not include a “severability clause” that allows their individual protections to remain even if some of them end up invalidated or cannot comply with existing law.
Because there is no severability clause, he argues, the Supreme Court’s decision invalidates all of the protections in the Fair Districts Amendments, not just those for minority voting districts.
Alarms for voting rights
At Tuesday’s press conference, organizers criticized the court’s decision for opening the door to ostensibly race-neutral voting maps that will make it easier for lawmakers to split up minority communities between districts and diminish their voting power.
“Now we are at risk of returning to a reality that we've seen before: a South where Black communities will exist in large numbers, but have little to no representation in Congress or in the state legislatures,” said Rep. Frost. “Not since Jim Crow have we seen this level of coordinated attacks on our community.”
Speakers also criticized the governor’s new map, and said it is unconstitutional. State Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis is a Democrat representing northwest Orange County.
“Let's call it what it really is: partisan gerrymandering — illegal mapmaking to favor one party over another,” Bracy Davis said. “This is suppression with a suit on. This is voter dilution dressed in legal language. This is politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians. And it is wrong and it is illegal.”
New lawsuits
Two new lawsuits were filed on Monday and Tuesday that challenge the new map and ask courts to revert to the map lawmakers approved in 2022.
One of those lawsuits, filed Tuesday morning, includes a coalition of nonprofits with significant legal muscle.
The case’s plaintiffs are the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group; Common Cause, also a nonpartisan voter advocacy group; and the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group advocating on behalf of Hispanic voters.
They’re being represented in court by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and the Democracy Defenders Fund.
On Monday evening, a smaller case was filed on behalf of six voters in districts that were modified because of the new map, including two in Central Florida.
That case is being represented by the University of California at Los Angeles’s Voting Rights Project and by the Campaign Legal Center.
All three suits have been filed in the state’s Second Judicial Circuit in Tallahassee.
Time is running out for a legal decision. The first paperwork deadline for would-be U.S. House candidates is five weeks away.
