Florida court’s redistricting decision muddies waters for 2024 election

A new Black congressional district in North Florida in 2024 is looking less likely after a state appeals court sided with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ redistricting maps, whether or not the state Supreme Court ever hears the case, experts said Monday.

“I think there’s now so much dirt up in the air that this is going to slow things down,” said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst.

The map pushed through by DeSantis last year, in an unprecedented involvement by a governor into the redistricting process, eliminated a Black majority seat in North Florida, represented by former Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson, that connected Black neighborhoods from Jacksonville to Tallahassee.

The plaintiffs, which include the League of Women Voters of Florida, struck an agreement with the state to limit their lawsuit opposing the map to North Florida and not Orange County’s District 10, which was redrawn to have a plurality white primary electorate, in return for a fast-tracked state Supreme Court decision in time for the 2024 elections.

But the 1st District Court of Appeal, instead of granting that fast-track request, decided to issue its own decision on Friday. It overturned a lower court judge who had ruled that the redistricting plan violated the Fair Districts amendments to the state Constitution.

That could now make it easier for the Supreme Court to simply not hear the case and let the decision stand, said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida.

“The appeals court has given the Supreme Court an out,” McDonald said. “… The Supreme Court will likely take the path of least resistance and just accept what the appeals court did, and then they never have to deal with it.”

Isbell, though, said the Supreme Court would likely want to respond to the appeals court taking a “hatchet” to prior Supreme Court decisions, including the original creation of District 5 itself.

“It feels like the Supreme Court would want to step in and say, ‘No, there are precedents here,’” Isbell said.

One such overturning of precedent was the appeals court’s ruling that District 5 was not “politically cohesive,” a requirement for protection under Fair Districts. That came under the most criticism.

“At its heart, the plaintiffs’ claim is based on a false premise … that minority voters living hundreds of miles apart in totally different communities, not joined in any reasonably configured geographically area, are entitled to proportional representation merely because they were once included together in [District 5] by court order for three election cycles,” the ruling states.

Isbell argued that the region has a long history of a Black population going back to the days of slavery and sharecropping, stating on his MCIMaps site that “many residents, especially in the rural communities, can trace ancestry back to the same village/county for centuries.”

Cecile Scoon, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Central Florida, said that section of the ruling ”is flying in the face of established [law], because the Florida Supreme Court authorized that district. … It’s not a good look.”

In a statement, Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, which initially filed the lawsuit, said that “instead of enforcing compliance with the constitution as written and as passed by the people of Florida, the court has instead tried to simply change the law.”

Still, Scoon said she was confident that the Supreme Court would abide by the fast-track agreement and agree to hear the case.

“The parties have agreed to keep it moving,” Scoon said. “… It’s not surprising that both sides would stipulate to an abbreviated schedule to get that final answer.”

Isbell, though, said there was an increasing likelihood that the Florida Supreme Court could decide on a full, lengthy trial.

“I think the chance of all of this continuing slowly, and running out of time in terms of 2024, is very realistic,” he said.

A separate federal lawsuit filed by Common Cause and other groups, citing the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution ratified in the wake of the Civil War, is also making its way through the courts.

DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern did not respond to a request for comment.