Fight to restore Black voters’ strength could dismantle Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A coalition of voting rights groups is pointing to a voter-approved amendment to argue Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis violated the state constitution when he dismantled a Black congressional district, but if they lose the case, the Fair Districts Amendment itself could also be tossed out.

The groups, which include Black Voters Matter and the League of Women Voters, asked the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday to rule DeSantis violated the constitution because his map diminished Black voting power in a north Florida district.

But the court raised the possibility that if it sides with the state and concludes that race can’t be the primary motivation in drawing a map, part or all of the 2010 Fair Districts Amendment could be thrown out.

“It just seems like it’s inevitably heading down the path to we’re going to have to just sort of decide can FDA work?” said Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz. “Will the whole FDA have to go?”

In 2010, Florida voters approved the Fair Districts Amendment prohibiting political districts from being drawn to favor a political party or incumbent. It also states that districts can’t be drawn to diminish the ability of minorities to choose their representatives and should be compact and contiguous.

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In 2022, DeSantis vetoed a map that would have preserved former Black Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson’s district and forced the Legislature to accept a map that created a more compact district favoring Republican candidates. DeSantis said the map he vetoed violated the federal constitution because it was drawn with race as a primary consideration.

Lawson represented an oddly shaped district that stretched about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from downtown Jacksonville west to rural Gadsden County along the Georgia border. While the district wasn’t majority Black, nearly half the voters were not white.

Lawyers for the state said the only explanation for the way the district was drawn was to connect Black communities that weren’t geographically connected, including dividing the city of Tallahassee on racial lines. They said while race can be a factor in drawing political lines, it can’t be the top consideration at the expense of other factors, such as creating a compact district and trying not to divide cities or counties.

A district court ruled in favor of the voting rights groups. An appeals court later overturned the decision.

While the Fair Districts Amendment was already in place when state Supreme Court approved Lawson’s district a decade ago, the court has vastly changed since then. Now, five of the seven members are DeSantis appointees, and of the remaining two, one dissented with the court’s previous decision.