The League of Women Voters of Florida together with Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, Equal Ground Education Fund, Florida Rising Together, and individual plaintiffs sued Florida’s Secretary of State, Attorney General, state House, state Senate, and other state officials for violating the Florida Constitution’s Fair Districts Amendment by adopting redistricting maps that favored Republicans and diminished the ability of Black voters to elect the candidates of their choice.
In 2010, the people of Florida voted overwhelmingly for the Fair Districts Amendment to the Florida Constitution, banning legislators from adopting district maps that favored political parties and incumbents or diminished the ability of racial and language minorities to elect representatives of their choice.
After the 2020 Census in February and March 2022, the Florida Legislature enacted new state legislative and congressional districts. Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed the congressional maps and called the legislature into a special session to redraw the congressional maps according to his own proposals, threatening a second veto unless the legislature agreed. The legislature enacted the governor’s plan. These new maps significantly favored Republicans.
The maps originally passed by the Florida Legislature, and then vetoed by Governor DeSantis, consisted of 16 Republican-favoring seats and 12 Democratic-favoring seats. The map enacted under the DeSantis plan instead produced 20 Republican-favoring seats and eight Democratic-favoring seats.
Furthermore, the enacted map divided Florida’s Fifth Congressional District, which was drawn to give Black voters in northern Florida a fair opportunity to elect a member of Congress, into four pieces. The vetoed congressional map had preserved the district after the Florida Legislature asserted it was a protected district under the Fair Districts Amendment’s non-diminishment standard.
While the district consisted of 46.2% Black voters in the vetoed map, Governor DeSantis’ plan divided the Black population of northern Florida across four new districts: Congressional Districts 2, 3, 4, and 5 (as redrawn). The resulting Black populations of these districts are 23.3%, 16.3%, 29.6%, and 11.8%, respectively, diminishing the ability of Black voters to elect their candidates of choice. The DeSantis plan also divided Black voters between multiple districts in central Florida, the Tampa Bay area, and south Florida.
In response, the League of Women Voters of Florida, together with voting rights organizations and individual plaintiffs, filed suit in state court to challenge the maps under the Florida Constitution’s Fair Districts Amendment.
On August 11, 2023, after nearly eighteen months of litigation, during which time elections were held under the challenged Congressional districts, the parties reached an agreement to narrow the claims at issue and consented to an appropriate remedy if the plaintiffs prevailed.
Under the stipulation, the plaintiffs dismissed their partisan gerrymandering claim and the claims against Congressional districts in central Florida and Tampa Bay under the Fair Districts Amendment.
In exchange, the defendants agreed that the plaintiffs had standing and stipulated that none of the current Congressional districts in northern Florida could elect candidates of Black voters' choice. The parties agreed that if the court ruled the Fair District Amendment's non-diminishment standard was constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause, the appropriate remedy would be to redraw a Congressional district linking Black communities in the Tallahassee and Jacksonville areas, ensuring they could elect a candidate of their choice, as in the former Fifth Congressional district.
The plaintiffs are represented by King, Blackwell, Zehnder and Wermuth, P.A., Perkins Coie LLP, and the Elias Law Group, LLP. Litigation is ongoing.