The decision Thursday backed districts that lawmakers redrew as part of the once-a-decade reapportionment process. The new lines are expected to allow Republicans to maintain control of the Legislature into the 2030s, though the plans could lead to GOP losing some seats in the House and Senate.
Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, called the new Senate map “a Mona Lisa.”
House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, interrupted a discussion about proposed congressional maps to announce the court ruling.
“This is no small feat, and it was no small task,” Sprowls said. “The (House) Redistricting Committee has been working for months to make sure we got this right. But let the message be to all Floridians the message that we set out from the very beginning, which is that we would do our work. And that we would come out with constitutionally compliant maps. That the integrity of the process would be unimpeachable. And that we will always defend the rule of law. We did that.”
The House and Senate maps did not draw any opposition at the Supreme Court. But legal challenges could still be filed in other courts.
House Minority Leader Evan Jenne, D-Dania Beach, said in a statement that the Supreme Court ruling wasn’t a surprise and that “we have a long way to go before the final story is written about this redistricting process.”
Jenne also alluded to part of the 19-page ruling that declined to address an argument by the Legislature that the court should revisit a past decision related to what are known as the “Fair Districts” constitutional amendments approved by voters in 2010. That past decision forced lawmakers to redraw Senate districts after the 2012 reapportionment process.
“The court upheld the facial review of the (new) maps. This wasn’t a decision on a fact-based challenge,” Jenne said. “Celebrating this is like running victory laps in the first quarter. We still have a lot of game left to play. One thing you didn’t hear crowed from the House floor today was that the attempt by the Legislature to silence other voices of opposition to these maps was rejected. The court did not agree to the House and Senate request to overturn constitutional precedent and stop further challenges.”
The Supreme Court said Thursday the Legislature “has raised an important issue, but one that would be more appropriately considered in an original writ proceeding, if a fact-based challenge to the 2022 apportionment is filed.”
Regardless, the ruling will help candidates for state House and Senate offices cement plans for their 2022 campaigns. All 120 House seats and 40 Senate seats will be up for election this year.
Republicans currently hold 78 of the 120 House seats, and an issue for Democrats is that the new House map would maintain 18 protected Black districts and 12 protected Hispanic districts. Democrats contend benchmarks used by the House in redrawing districts failed to address increases in Black, Hispanic and Creole-speaking residents over the past decade.
Republicans argued the minority population increases didn’t alter the overall percentages in terms of overall population.
The new House map carved 71 districts where voters supported former Republican President Donald Trump in 2020 and 49 that favored Democratic President Joe Biden.
In the Senate, the Republican dominance could slip from 24 seats to 23, based on 2020 voting patterns.
While the Supreme Court backed the legislative maps, the House and Senate still need to reach agreement on a new congressional map before the scheduled March 11 end of the legislative session.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2022.