The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments about Florida’s congressional districts in September

Share
Florida redistricting
Redrawn Congressional districts proposed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in April, 2022.

©2024 The News Service of Florida

The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments Sept. 12 in a battle about the constitutionality of a congressional redistricting plan that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the Legislature in 2022.

The court, which had previously agreed to take up the case, issued an order Tuesday scheduling the arguments.

The case centers on North Florida’s Congressional District 5, which in the past elected Black Democrat Al Lawson but was overhauled in 2022 — with a white Republican subsequently getting elected.

Voting rights groups argue the plan violates a 2010 state constitutional amendment that prohibited drawing districts that would “diminish” the ability of minorities to “elect representatives of their choice.”

But DeSantis argued that keeping a district similar to the past District 5 would be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

The 1st District Court of Appeal in December upheld the plan, leading the voting rights groups to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

You may also like

Endangered Florida butterfly species actually benefits from hurricanes, data shows

Listen: One of the rarest butterflies in the country, the...

pillar coral
Update: NOAA delays listing pillar coral as “endangered”

NOAA has delayed changing the status of pillar coral from...

The Scoop: Fri. Feb. 14, 2025, Tampa Bay and Florida headlines by WMNF

Roundup of WMNF news headlines including Ron DeSantis, Florida inmate...

FPREN cold weather
Toasty Florida will become rainy Florida; more cold fronts are on the way

On Sunday night Florida will get a cold front that...

Ways to listen

WMNF is listener-supported. That means we don't advertise like a commercial station, and we're not part of a university.

Ways to support

WMNF volunteers have fun providing a variety of needed services to keep your community radio station alive and kickin'.

Da' Soul Kitchen
Player position: