Fight to empower black voters could undo Florida's Fair Districts Amendment

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A coalition of voting rights advocacy groups is pointing to a voter-approved amendment to argue that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis violated the state constitution when he eliminated a black congressional district. If the coalition loses the case, however, the Fair Districts Amendment itself could be thrown out.

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

However, the Court has considered the possibility that the Fair Districts Amendment of 2010 could be struck down in whole or in part if it sides with the state and concludes that race cannot be the primary motive for creating a map.

“It seems that it is inevitably going to come down to a decision about whether the FDA can function,” said Chief Judge Carlos Muñiz. “Will the entire FDA have to go?”

In 2010, Florida voters approved the Fair Districts Amendment, which prohibits districts from being drawn in a way that favors any party or incumbent. It also states that districts cannot be drawn in a way that limits the ability of minorities to elect their representatives, and that they should be compact and contiguous.

In 2022, DeSantis vetoed a map that would have retained former Black Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson's district, forcing the legislature to accept a map that created a more compact district that favored Republican candidates. DeSantis said the map he rejected violated the federal constitution because it was created with race as the primary criterion.

Lawson represented an unusually shaped district that stretched about 200 miles west from downtown Jacksonville to rural Gadsden County along the Georgia border. Although the majority of the district's voters were not black, nearly half of 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 were not geographically connected, including dividing the city of Tallahassee along racial lines. They said while race can be a factor in political boundary drawing, it should not be the primary 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.

Although the Fair Districts Amendment was already in effect when the state Supreme Court approved Lawson's district a decade ago, the court has changed significantly since then. Today, five of the seven members are DeSantis appointees, and of the remaining two, one disagreed with the court's previous decision.