Is There Hope The US Supreme Court Will Throw Out The DeSantis Gerrymander

After the last census, Florida was awarded a 28th congressional district. It wouldn’t take a genius to imagine that a totally controlled Republican legislature and a Republican governor would redraw the state’s congressional map to make certain that the new seat would be a GOP slam-dunk. Before the maps were redrawn, Florida 12 Republican-leaning seats, 8 Democratic-leaning seats and 5 vaguely competitive seats. These were the competitive seats:

• FL-07 (Stephanie Murphy)- D+5

• FL-09 (Darren Soto)- D+4

• FL-13 (Charlie Crist)- R+1

• FL-26 (Carlos Gimenez)- R+3

• FL-27 (Maria Salazar)- D+4

But after much drama— including DeSantis taking the whole process away from the legislature for not gerrymandering deeply enough— the new map yielded 18 Republican-leaning states, 8 Democratic-leaning districts , and just 2 competitive districts. The two competitive districts are the 2 Miami-Dade seats:

• FL-28 (Carlos Gimenez)- R+3

• FL-27 (Maria Salazar)- D+1

In 2020, Florida had 14 Republicans and 13 Democrats in Congress. After DeSantis redrew the district boundaries, there were 20 Republicans and 8 Democrats. The map guaranteed that Republicans would flip the 5th (Al Lawson), 7th (Stephanie Murphy) and 13th (Charlie Crist) districts as well as gain a new member in the newly-created 15th district (now Scott Franklin). DeSantis’ greed— and overt racism— may well hoist him on his own petard as it is the U.S. Supreme Court— not his hand-picked puppets on the state Supreme Court— who will make the decision. Overt partisanship is find with the Court. But the kind of overt racism that DeSantis displayed in eliminating Al Lawson’s district is a no-no, even with the current Court. When the legislature passed the final version, there were shouts in the chamber of “stop the Black attack.”

Reporting for the Tallahassee Democrat on Tuesday, John Kennedy reported on the on-going litigation over the maps. Following the good news for Black voters in Alabama and Lousiana, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to reject the MAGA “legal theory advanced by North Carolina lawmakers that would have given legislatures unchecked authority to enact federal voting rules and create congressional redistricting maps guided by partisan gerrymandering. The League of Women Voters of Florida and allied voter groups are challenging Florida’s 28-district, congressional map, where 20 seats were won by Republicans last fall.”

The lawsuit contends the map violates the state’s voter-approved Fair Districts constitutional amendments, which prohibit creating boundaries that diminish minority voting strength or are designed to help or hurt individual candidates or parties.

…Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, ruled, “state courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause. But federal courts must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review.”

Had the court ruled in favor of North Carolina, those involved in the case said Republican-led legislatures around the nation were ready to reach for more power over redistricting and elections cases.

Neal Katyal, an attorney representing plaintiffs Common Cause and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in the case, Moore v. Harper, said the Republican National Committee had submitted legal briefs endorsing the independent state legislature view of North Carolina Republicans.

“They lay out a kind of how-to roadmap for how to undermine our democracy and undermine checks and balances. So this was the playbook, and it was really important that the U.S. Supreme Court, 6-3, closed the door on that playbook,” Katyal said. “Because they certainly were going to run it.”

North Carolina’s 14-seat House delegation is currently split evenly, but Republican lawmakers later this year are expected to draw a map that could win them 11 seats, even after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling.

In Florida, the League of Women Voters’ challenge is in state court, while another lawsuit also seeking to overturn the state’s congressional districts has been filed in federal court.

Opponents say the new boundaries dramatically reduced the influence of Black voters and violated the state’s Fair Districts requirements, approved by voters in 2010.

But DeSantis and his GOP allies say their self-described “race-neutral” approach complies with the federal constitution’s equal protection clause. Fair Districts violates that provision with its “no diminishment” requirement, the governor’s side is ready to argue in a trial set for August.

In a court hearing earlier this month, Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh ruled that the state can advance as a defense its argument that Fair Districts standards don’t comply with the U.S. Constitution.

Relatively fair, rejected map