The war over the state’s political boundaries entered its next stage Thursday as final passage of the Legislature’s redistricting plan for the state’s congressional delegation was met with a lawsuit backed by the Florida Democratic Party and the threat of more to come.
Within moments of the Senate approving the plan on a bipartisan 32-5 margin the Democratic Party announced that several voters working with the party had filed a lawsuit challenging the maps on the grounds that they violate the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts amendments approved by voters last fall.
A coalition of voting-rights groups responded that it would follow suit as soon as Gov. Rick Scott officially signed the plans into law, as expected. Both lawsuits either were or will be filed in Leon County Circuit Court.
The maps for the state House and Senate, which passed the upper chamber on a 31-7 vote, will automatically go to the Florida Supreme Court after Attorney General Pam Bondi reviews them; the hearings on those maps are expected to mark another front in the legal battle. Democrats said they planned to be involved in the Supreme Court review as well.
The filing of lawsuits against the maps was viewed as a near certainty from the beginning of the once-a-decade redistricting process. Perhaps the only surprise was how quickly the first lawsuit was filed.
State Democratic Party Executive Director Scott Arceneaux said the party moved as quickly as it did on the assumption that Scott would sign the maps within hours.
“Now the courts have to step in to implement the will of the people — a job the GOP in Tallahassee failed to accomplish,” Party Chairman Rod Smith said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
Senate Reapportionment Chairman Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) shrugged off the challenge as an expected and likely unsuccessful attempt to derail the process.
“The sad part is now the taxpayers of Florida have to be dragged into court by special-interest groups who always intended to be dissatisfied,” Gaetz told reporters after the Senate vote.
Gaetz said a round of redistricting lawsuits in 2002 cost the state $10 million.
The Central Florida district represented by Republican Congressman Dan Webster and the South Florida seat held by Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart are among those targeted by critics of the map. Arceneaux said Webster’s district was one that the party would highlight.