Former Black congressional district’s fate won’t be decided in time for fall elections

The Florida Supreme Court will not resolve the fate of a former Black-opportunity congressional district in North Florida in time to affect the November elections, after rejecting voting rights groups’ request that it fast-track the case.

The justices issued a terse notice Monday rejecting the plea from Black Lives Matter Capacity Building Institute, League of Women Voters of Florida, Equal Ground Education Fund, Florida Rising Together, and individual voters to schedule oral arguments during the first week in April.

“Florida has already held one election under what petitioners argue, and two different trial courts have found, is an unconstitutional redistricting plan. Without an expedited briefing schedule, petitioners and Floridians will again vote under a redistricting plan of questionable legality,” those plaintiffs argued in a motion filed with the court Feb. 1.

In a reply filed a week later, attorneys for the state argued there’s simply not enough time to resolve the case to avoid injecting uncertainty into the fall congressional elections.

“The few weeks between the [state Supreme Court’s] April oral-argument sitting and the April 26 qualifying deadline is not enough time to give this case the careful consideration it deserves and, if necessary, for the Legislature to convene and enact new congressional districts. For issues as weighty as these, it is better to measure twice and cut once,” the state’s brief reads.

The Legislature’s annual 60-day regular session, during which it could respond to any court order to draw a new map, is set to close on March 8. You’ll find background on the litigation here.

The dispute involves the old Congressional District 5, which until 2022 gathered enough Black voters in a 200-mile swath of North Florida to elect Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, to Congress. However, in spring of that year, Gov. Ron DeSantis compelled a reluctant Legislature to adopt his map, which split the Lawson district among white-majority districts that elected Republicans.

The voting rights groups argue that the existing map violates both the federal Voting Rights Act and Florida’s Fair Districts state constitutional amendment by diminishing Black voters’ power to elect the candidate of their choice. The state Supreme Court itself drew the so-called benchmark district in 2015, following extended litigation after the 2010 congressional reapportionment.

DeSantis insisted the district amounted to a “racial gerrymander” forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause.