A panel of federal judges Monday upheld a 2022 Florida Senate redistricting plan, rejecting arguments that a Tampa Bay-area district was racially gerrymandered and violated constitutional equal-protection rights.
The three-judge panel issued a 78-page ruling in the case that centered on Senate District 16, which crosses Tampa Bay to connect parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.
The plaintiffs, three Black residents of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, contended that the district — which in recent years has been represented by Black Democrat Darryl Rouson — was racially gerrymandered and, in part, has reduced the influence of Black voters in Pinellas County’s neighboring Senate District 18.
But the panel, which held a trial in June, ruled that the district is “not a racial gerrymander because the Legislature did not subordinate traditional race-neutral redistricting criteria to race-based considerations.”
“After a careful review of the evidence and the benefit of a four-day bench trial, we find that race did not predominate in the Legislature’s motivations in drawing Senate District 16. … The Senate never set racial targets or quotas,” said the opinion, written by 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Andrew Brasher and joined by U.S. District Judges Thomas Barber and Charlene Edwards Honeywell.
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Unlike typical federal lawsuits, three-judge panels handle such redistricting cases. The neighboring Senate District 18 is represented by Sen. Nick DiCeglie, a white Republican from Indian Rocks Beach.
The Senate case was one of a series of legal battles stemming from the 2022 redistricting process. In perhaps the highest-profile case, the Florida Supreme Court last month upheld a congressional redistricting plan pushed through the Legislature by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
A separate federal lawsuit challenging state House districts is pending in Miami.
The Senate case focused, in part, on the interplay between federal equal-protection rights and a 2010 state constitutional amendment, known as the Fair Districts Amendment, that set standards for redistricting. One part of the standards seeks to prevent diminishing the ability of minorities to elect candidates of their choice — what is known as its “non-diminishment” clause.
The plaintiffs contended that the Senate did not adequately look at alternatives that would have met the non-diminishment requirement without a district crossing Tampa Bay.
“In sum, the explanations the Senate gave at the time for why it drew District 16 as it did all point to a single reason: race,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote in a filing last month. “The Legislature’s stated predominant goal in drawing District 16 was to avoid diminishing Black voters’ ability-to-elect. At no point did the Legislature consider options that would have accomplished these anti-diminishment goals while avoiding drawing the district predominantly based on race.”
But attorneys for Senate President Ben Albriton, R-Wauchula, disputed the plaintiffs’ arguments, writing in a filing last month that the “evidence at trial established that Senate District 16 was not the product of racial gerrymandering.” They wrote that race was only looked at to ensure compliance with the Fair Districts amendment.
“Plaintiffs have not carried their burden of proving that race predominated in the design of Senate District 16,” Albritton’s attorneys wrote. “The evidence demonstrates that the Florida Senate employed race-neutral criteria, including compactness, contiguity, and use of existing political and geographical boundaries, in drawing the district. Racial considerations were not used to determine the configuration of District 16, and were reviewed only after the fact to ensure compliance with the Florida Constitution’s non-diminishment standard.”
The three-judge panel Monday said it found that the Legislature “did not consider racial data until after applying race-neutral criteria to draw Senate District 16.”
“The weight of the evidence establishes that the Legislature did not subordinate its race-neutral criteria to racial considerations,” the opinion said. “Specifically, the evidence demonstrates that Legislature prioritized compactness, boundary usage and contiguity.”
