Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments against Ron DeSantis’ congressional map

The Florida Supreme Court will hear minority advocates’ case against a congressional map designed and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Justices called on plaintiffs in the case to file their initial briefs by Feb. 28, providing more than a month to submit arguments. A date hasn’t been set yet for oral arguments, raising questions as to how quickly the case can be resolved.

The state’s high court accepted jurisdiction on the redistricting case. Justices took on the case more than a month after Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeal upheld the congressional map and struck down a lower court ruling finding the political lines denied minority communities the right to elect Representatives of their choice.

An order lays out a deliberative process for the case. Once plaintiffs file their arguments with the high court, the state will have 30 days to respond. From there, plaintiffs can offer a counterargument to the state’s case within 30 days, and the high court also allows for a cross-reply brief to be filed.

Justice Charles Canady, husband to state Rep. Jennifer Canady, has continued to recuse himself from the case.

How fast the case moves could impact whether any ruling changes Florida’s political landscape before congressional elections are held in 2024. All candidates for federal office in Florida must qualify by noon on April 26.

The redistricting case always appeared bound for the Florida Supreme Court. Plaintiffs, led by the Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, filed a challenge in state court immediately after DeSantis signed the map. Minority advocates argued the DeSantis map wrongly dismantled a North Florida congressional district previously represented by U.S. Rep. Al Lawson, a Tallahassee Democrat.

The Legislature initially planned to maintain the configuration of that district, but DeSantis called lawmakers’ plan an “unconstitutional gerrymander.” He vetoed maps produced by the Legislature and called lawmakers back into Special Session to pass a map designed by Alex Kelly, then his Deputy Chief of Staff.

Leon Circuit Court Judge Lee Marsh in September ruled in favor of plaintiffs suing the state and said the cartography diminished Black voters’ ability to elect a Representative of their choice, a direct violation of the Fair Districts Amendment approved by voters in 2010. He also rejected an argument from DeSantis that drawing a district that protects the influence of Black voters violates the “equal protection clause” of the U.S. Constitution.

“This case is about whether the Legislature, in enacting its most recent congressional redistricting plan, violated the Florida Constitution by diminishing the ability of Black voters in North Florida to elect representatives of their choice. It is also about whether that provision of the Florida Constitution violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Marsh wrote. “In short, the answers are yes and no, respectively.”

But the appellate court agreed with DeSantis, and said a map approved by a prior configuration of the Florida Supreme Court in 2015 ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.

“The plaintiffs did not submit any evidence regarding the existence of naturally occurring (rather than court-manufactured) Black communities within the former CD-5,” read a majority ruling by Judges Brad Thomas and Adam Tanenbaum.

“Nothing in the record describes who the Black voters are as members of a meaningful community — nothing about a shared history or shared socio-economic experience among the Black voters in Tallahassee, Jacksonville, and other areas throughout the expanse of former CD-5.”