Space Coast News: Florida supreme court orders districts to be redrawn

BREAKING: Florida Supreme Court says congressional districts passed by Republicans are unconstitutional.

The order also could affect neighboring districts.

The court called for the legislature to expedite its redrawing of the eight districts ahead of the elections and chastised lawmakers for their previous work on the boundaries.

Eight of Florida’s 27 congressional districts, initially drawn by the GOP-controlled state legislature, must now be redrawn completely in time for the 2016 election.

“Since numerous e-mails were deleted or destroyed, we still may have only a partial picture of the behind-the-scenes political tactics”, Justice Barbara Pariente wrote for the majority in the 5-2 opinion. That will assist this Court in fulfilling its own solemn obligation to ensure compliance with the Florida Constitution in this unique context, where the trial court found the Legislature to have violated the constitutional standards during the 2012 redistricting process. The court is giving lawmakers 100 days to complete the new maps, and that means lawmakers will have to convene in a second special session outside the normal March through May legislative session. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli and Senate President Andy Gardiner were reviewing the decision and neither planned to comment on it Thursday.

Goodman says the ruling affects more than just Florida. Corrine Brown, Kathy Castor, Ted Deutch and Lois Frankel and Republican Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (25th) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (27th).

The state’s congressional maps, and in particular Brown’s oddly-shaped district stretching from Jacksonville to the Orlando area, have been the subject of ongoing litigation. Her district is created to contain a majority of African-Americans. Certainly, minority communities do not live in compact, cookie-cutter like neighborhoods, and excessive adherence to district ‘compactness, ‘ while ignoring the maintenance of minority access districts, fragments minority communities across the state.

The plaintiffs tried and failed to get the map redrawn in the lower courts on the basis the current map violated Fair District amendments in the state constitution.

It’s an important decision for Florida voters, who’d made clear their distaste of politicized redistricting by approving the amendment.