Ryan Ray
Thursday’s landmark Florida Supreme Court decision invalidating eight congressional districts drawn by the Legislature sends shock waves through Florida’s balance of power. That’s true nowhere more than in the northern third of the state, where a national debate in the courts over U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown‘s 5th Congressional District continued to bleed into adjacent districts.
“Even as redrawn by the Legislature and approved by the trial court, District 5 clearly does not strictly adhere” to constitutional strictures, Justice Barbara Pariente wrote on behalf of the majority.
Going beyond last year’s ruling on the 2011 maps, which struck down the district and ordered it withdrawn, the court specifically revived a proposal — struck down by an earlier court — to reconfigure the district laterally and instructed the Legislature: “[W]e hold that District 5 must be redrawn in an East-West manner.”
Brown, a seven-term Democrat whose district winds from Jacksonville to Orlando, immediately registered her displeasure with the decision.
“District 5 in Florida, and minority access districts across the nation cannot, and will not be eliminated, particularly after the hard-fought gains we have made during the last 50 years,” said Brown in a prepared statement Thursday afternoon. “As a people, African-Americans have fought too hard to get to where we are now, and we are not taking any steps backward.”
Brown’s district as currently composed contains parts or all of 14 counties, as does that of freshman Democrat U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham.
Congressional District 2, represented by Graham, would be radically altered by one proposed map offered by the League of Women Voters during the voter rights group’s original challenge to the 2011 maps. That map — which runs east and west, potentially fulfilling the high court’s instructions — splits Tallahassee in half.
The capital city is Graham’s electoral base, and such a fissure would throw her chances of re-election in 2016 into jeopardy.
As most observers expected, the court opted not to redraw the district boundary lines itself, instead still delegating that duty to the Legislature with specific instructions.
That leaves some latitude for chief legislative mapmakers Sen. Bill Galvano and Rep. Richard Corcoran and their GOP colleagues — some of whom may have designs on Graham’s eastern Panhandle seat — during an upcoming Special Session to redraw the maps, which are due for the court’s review by Oct. 22.
Reached for comment, the Graham camp says it’s focused on more immediate tasks at hand rather than the legal eccentricities of the (re-)redistricting process.
“Rep. Graham has a very full congressional schedule today, and hasn’t had time to fully review the opinion yet,” a spokesman for the congresswoman said Thursday.
