Jim Rosica
Circuit Judge Terry Lewis has given parties in the ongoing congressional redistricting case until Monday to submit their final versions of how to draw boundary lines for those districts.
At a brief hearing on Friday, Lewis set the date for all competing maps to be submitted. A final hearing on the matter still is set for Sept. 24, court dockets show.
Time is of the essence: Candidate qualifying for congressional office is set for June 20-24, 2016, according to the state’s elections website.
Just last week, House Speaker Steve Crisafulli said his chamber won’t back down from their version and didn’t agree to try to work out differences with the Senate.
State Sen. Bill Galvano, who heads that chamber’s redistricting panel, had last offered a map that puts the southern flank of eastern Hillsborough County back into the 16th Congressional District, now held by Republican U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan.
Previously, the Senate backed a map by state Sen. Tom Lee that put all of eastern Hillsborough into the 15th District, now held by Republican Dennis Ross. It also drew Ross out of his district, putting Ross’ residence across the street from the new boundary line.
House leaders said that Senate map almost certainly would be ruled unconstitutional because it favors Hillsborough at the expense of portions of Central Florida.
The Legislature held a Special Session last month but failed to agree on a new map.
The League of Women Voters of Florida and Common Cause sued over the current congressional lines drawn after the 2010 census.
They said the current map violates a state constitutional prohibition against gerrymandering, the manipulation of political boundaries to favor a particular incumbent or party.
The case worked its way to the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled the current map “tainted by unconstitutional intent to favor the Republican Party and incumbents.”
The court handed the case back to Lewis, giving 100 days to come up with a solution. That time runs out in mid-October.
Another Special Session to redraw the state Senate districts set for Oct. 19 to Nov. 6.
Current officeholders are watching the congressional maps court case closely.
For example, U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham’s political future is in question because the court ordered U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown‘s district, which now runs north-south from Jacksonville from Sanford, to be redrawn “in an east-west manner.”
That stretches it into Graham’s 2nd Congressional District in the Big Bend and Panhandle.
