Florida Senate District 16 redistricting trial kicks off in federal court in Tampa

A federal lawsuit alleging that a Tampa Bay area state Senate district was racially gerrymandered kicked off in a Tampa federal courtroom on Monday.

The suit, filed by the ACLU of Florida and the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Clinic at New York University on behalf of three residents of Tampa and St. Petersburg, alleges that the Legislature’s plan in 2022 to connect Black populations from parts of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties into Senate District 16 violated their equal-protection rights by unjustifiably packing Black voters into District 16 and removing them from nearby District 18, reducing their influence there. The defendants are Senate President Ben Albritton and Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd.

The Senate district is represented by St. Petersburg Democrat Darryl Rouson. The suit originally challenged the creation of Senate District 18 in Pinellas County, represented by Republican Nick DiCeglie, but a three-judge panel rejected that charge earlier this year, saying the plaintiffs had not provided adequate evidence.

District 16 includes parts of South St. Petersburg and then goes across Tampa Bay to encompass a large portion of Hillsborough County, beginning at the southernmost part just above Manatee County and spreading north, capturing the University of South Florida campus in North Tampa and ending at I-75 to the east.

Testimony came from the plaintiffs (two from Hillsborough and one from St. Petersburg), who said that the drawing up of District 16 hurt their representation in Tallahassee. But the lead witness was actually Nicholas Warren, who took the stand for several hours.

Warren happens to be the ACLU’s lead attorney in the case. The defense is contending that he actively worked to create a partisan map that would help Democrats by having private exchanges with legislators and Democratic staffers regarding redistricting.

Warren, who testified that he grew up as an aficionado of sorts on redistricting legislative and congressional seats, submitted redrawn maps for both the state Senate and the congressional redrawing in the fall of 2021. He said he received a negative response from the ACLU of Florida’s then-executive director, Micah Kubic, after learning about the submission. Warren submitted a Senate map that he said protected Black voters without having to cross Tampa Bay.

Warren said on Monday that he never disclosed that he worked for the ACLU because the Senate form on which he submitted his map did not ask that question. Instead, he said he was submitting his maps an a citizen who cared about the process.

However, after he submitted his maps, he was accused by the GOP Sen. Ray Rodrigues, who chaired that committee, of violating Senate rules when he presented his map without identifying himself as a staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida.

Text messages

Daniel Nordby is lead attorney representing Albritton, while Mohammad Jazil represents Secretary of State Cord Byrd. They were able to admit into court dozens of pages of text messages that Warren exchanged during the redistricting process with Matthew Isbell, the Tallahassee data analyst who mostly works with Democrats, over the objections of attorney David Chen with the the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Clinic at NYU Law.

Warren said while he is a Democrat, his submitted map was not designed to help Democrats win more seats.

The three plaintiffs contend that their rights have been violated because of how Senate District separates Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

Meiko Seymour, a St. Petersburg pastor, said (remotely) that the fact that the district includes just a part of St. Petersburg with a much bigger chunk in Hillsborough County made no sense, because “the two sides just have completely different needs.”

He noted that Senate District 16 divides the city of St. Petersburg, with DiCeglie representing one half in District 18 and Rouson the other part in District 16.

“We do not get to vote with our majority counterparts,” he noted.

Keto Nord Hodges resides in North Hillsborough County. He testified that the map did not represent his community, and listed access to public transportation and tax incentives for local businesses as some of the factors that make the two areas “completely different.”

“We really don’t see Sen. Rouson in Tampa,” he said, adding, “I can’t remember the last time I saw him.”

However, under cross examination, Nord Hodges acknowledged he didn’t know that Rouson had two district offices in Hillsborough, one in Tampa and one in Brandon.

Yvette Lewis, head of the Hillsborough branch of the NAACP, answered “Yes and no,” when asked whether she was aware that Rouson had satellite offices in Hillsborough County. She said that there were “buildings” where Rouson could meet up with people, but not specifically offices.

MLK Day

She mentioned how one year the lawmaker would celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in Tampa, the next year in St. Petersburg, as an indication of how spread out his duties were and how he couldn’t serve both of his constituencies in the district.

Attorneys for the defense asked all of the plaintiffs who testified whether they were aware of the criteria lawmakers had to use when drawing up legislative districts. All admitted that they did not have all that information.

Among the criteria is that, under the Fair District Amendments passed in 2010, the state’s electoral maps must meet two-tier requirements. Tier-1 prohibits intentional partisan gerrymandering and requires districts to ensure racial and language minority voters have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice and participate in the political process. Tier-2 standards require that the districts are compact and follow existing political and geographic boundaries.

One witness for the plaintiffs who was missing in action on Monday was former Central Florida Democratic state Sen. Randolph Bracy, despite the fact that he was subpoenaed to testify.

The case is being heard by a panel of three federal judges: U.S. Circuit Court Judge Andrew L. Brasher, U.S. Senior District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell, and U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Barber.

The story has been corrected to indicate that there are 3 plaintiffs in the case and that Attorney David Chen is with the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Clinic at NYU Law.