DeSantis prevails in quashing Black congressional district, but U.S. judge sees a racial motive

Gov. Ron DeSantis has claimed victory now that a federal trial court has upheld his demolition of a Black-controlled Congressional District in North Florida, but the price includes a withering denunciation: That he was willing to cut Black voting strength to put more Republicans in office.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled Wednesday that the organizations and individual voters challenging the governor’s congressional redistricting plan two years ago had failed to demonstrate that the Legislature acted out of racial discrimination.

But Judge Adalberto Jordan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who participated in the lower court proceedings, concluded in a concurring opinion that DeSantis “acted with race as a motivating factor (among others) in drawing and pushing through” his congressional redistricting plan.

Another panel member, Allen Winsor of the Northern District, disagreed in a separate concurrence. And the unsigned joint opinion argues that any suspect motivations on the governor’s part didn’t matter because what counts were the Legislature’s motives, and the court found an “absence of any evidence that any member of the Florida Legislature, much less a majority of its members, was actually motivated by racial discrimination.”

Filling out the panel was District Judge Casey Rogers. Federal procedure calls for these panels in reapportionment cases; any appeal would go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Two years ago, I vetoed the congressional redistricting map that the Legislature passed; we ended up getting a different map,” the governor said during a news conference Thursday.

“There was a lot of carping back then, a lot of media that map was not going to pass legal muster, there was a lot of gnashing of teeth about that, and so last night there was a three-judge panel federal court 3-0 upheld the map as being constitutional and that’s what we said would happen,” he added.

CD 5

DeSantis’ map eliminated a version of the old Congressional District 5, extending from Jacksonville through Tallahassee to majority-Black Gadsden County to gather descendants of the plantation-era “slave belt,” which for years sent Black Democrat Al Lawson to Congress. The map instead created a series of white-majority districts that have elected Republicans. The governor forced the Legislature to accept his map after vetoing its legislative plan preserving the district.

“We won’t let this go unchallenged,” Common Cause Florida, one of the plaintiffs, said of the outcome on its X feed.

“Yesterday, the court failed Black Floridians. Failed to protect us from intentional discrimination seeking to limit our collective voice on the basis of race,” said Adora Obi Nweze, president of the NAACP Florida State Conference, another plaintiff.

“But setbacks and injustices like this are not new. We will keep fighting for Black communities in Florida to be heard. And we will triumph in the end because when the people fight together, the people win,” she added.

“This is not only disappointing, but it sets a perilous precedent,” said Ellen Freidin, CEO of FairDistricts NOW. In 2010, the group sponsored Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment, designed to prevent redistricting that serves partisan ends or diminishes racial or language minority strength.

“The court is saying that a state legislature can erase a performing Black district for political gain as long as it can blame the governor for coming up with the racist scheme in the first place. The ultimate result permits legislators to conspire with the governor to keep themselves and their party in power while remaining insulated from the law,” Freidin said.

State proceedings

A similar lawsuit is pending before the Florida Supreme Court implicating the Fair Districts Amendment and the U.S. Voting Rights Act. Those also were at issue in the federal case, in addition to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendment.

As DeSantis noted during his news conference, a state trial judge ruled against his map but was overruled by a full panel of the Florida First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee.

“There’ll be another review from the Florida Supreme Court, but I don’t think you’re going to see anything different than what’s already been happening,” DeSantis said.

“So, you get a lot of gnashing of teeth, you get a lot of people try to offer analysis, but then when this actually comes into rubber meets the road, it turns out that they were full of hot air. But you don’t see them go back and say, ‘Oh yeah, we were wrong about that, they just go back and act like it never happened,” he continued.

“The reality is we were right in 2022 to veto the map, we were right to sign the revised map, and we were right when we said that they would be upheld in courts as being constitutional. And so, that’s just where we are two years later.”

DeSantis argued the sprawling CD 5, referred to in the case as the “baseline” district, represented a racial gerrymander that offended the U.S. Constitution’s equal-protection language. By the way, the governor’s map gave Republicans 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts, but no one has challenged that as a partisan gerrymander.

Motives

The court majority wasn’t going to call out the governor’s motives. Judge Jordan was less constrained.

“I do not think that Gov. DeSantis harbors personal racial animus toward Black voters. But I do believe that he used race impermissibly as a means to achieve ends (including partisan advantage) that he cannot admit to,” Jordan writes.

“As others have explained, a finding of discriminatory purpose in these circumstances is not tantamount to a finding that the governor had a racist motivation but is instead the product of … [him] engag[ing] in the single-minded pursuit of incumbency by disregarding and targeting the ability of Black voters in North Florida to elect their candidate of choice,” he continues.

However: “I join the court’s opinion because I agree that the plaintiffs have failed to prove that the Legislature ratified or adopted the governor’s use of race as a motivating factor.”

Jordan cast doubt on the veracity of J. Alex Kelly, who drew the governor’s map and now serves as Florida Secretary of Commerce, and DeSantis general counsel Ryan Newman, suggesting they were “not telling the truth” and “disingenuous.”

Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, consciousness of race is allowed in redistricting as long as it’s not “the predominant factor,” Jordan writes.

Winsor was more sympathetic to DeSantis.

“To be sure, the governor’s opposition was strong. But a strong opposition to race-based districting is no better evidence of racial animus than a moderate opposition to it. Florida governors, like United States presidents, routinely use their legislative authority to advance their policy goals, just as legislators do,” Winsor writes.

“Plaintiffs call the governor’s insistence here ‘bull[ying] the Legislature.’ Others might call it exercising political will. But one shouldn’t call it racist. In my view, the fact that the governor went to great lengths to oppose race-based redistricting provides zero evidence of racial animus.”

Florida Phoenix Senior Reporter Mitch Perry contributed to this report.