Jarvis El-Amin, a plaintiff in a lawsuit over whether Senate District 16 violates constitutional equal-protection rights, at WMNF in Tampa, Florida on June 13, 2025. Credit: Photo by Ray Roa

TALLAHASSEE — A panel of federal judges is set to decide whether a Florida Senate district that stretches across Tampa Bay was racially gerrymandered and needs to be revamped.

After a trial last month, attorneys for Senate President Ben Albritton, Secretary of State Cord Byrd and plaintiffs filed detailed arguments Monday about whether Senate District 16 violates constitutional equal-protection rights. The case is one of a series of legal battles stemming from the 2022 redistricting process — including a battle that led last week to the Florida Supreme Court upholding a congressional plan pushed through the Legislature by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The plaintiffs in the Senate case, three Black residents of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, contend that District 16 — 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.

“District 16 stretches across the waters of Tampa Bay to connect disparate and distinct Black communities in Tampa and St. Petersburg, packing more than half of the region’s Black residents into one district,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote in their 80-page filing Monday. “As a result, Black residents are artificially stripped from adjacent District 18, diminishing their influence and voice in elections there.”

But attorneys for Albritton, R-Wauchula, disputed the plaintiffs’ arguments, writing 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 a 2010 state constitutional amendment — known as the Fair Districts Amendment — that said new maps cannot “diminish” the ability of racial minorities “to elect representatives of their choice.”

“Plaintiffs have not carried their burden of proving that race predominated in the design of Senate District 16,” Albritton’s attorneys wrote in a 99-page filing. “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.”

It is unclear when the panel, made up of 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Andrew Brasher and U.S. District Judges Thomas Barber and Charlene Edwards Honeywell, will issue a ruling. Unlike typical federal lawsuits, three-judge panels handle such redistricting cases.

If the plaintiffs are ultimately successful, it could lead to redrawing District 16 and other Senate districts. Districts are required to have similar population numbers, so changing the boundaries of one district would ripple into other districts.

A separate federal lawsuit challenging state House districts is pending in Miami.

The Senate case focuses, in part, on the interplay between federal equal-protection rights and the 2010 state constitutional amendment that seeks to prevent diminishing the ability of minorities to elect candidates of their choice.

The plaintiffs contend 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’ filing Monday said. “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 the brief filed by Albritton’s attorneys said Pinellas County’s population is too large for one Senate district. After drawing other districts in the Tampa Bay region and in areas north to Citrus County, it said about 100,000 people in southern Pinellas needed to be combined with residents in another county to form a district.

“Contrary to plaintiffs’ assertions, the weight of the evidence does not indicate that the Senate’s decision to split Hillsborough and Pinellas counties reflected racial motivations,” the Senate’s attorneys wrote. “The trial record contains no evidence that racial data was consulted when deciding how to divide these counties.”

Also, attorneys for Albritton and Byrd asserted that the plaintiffs wanted alternative maps that would help Democrats.

“Plaintiffs want to replace what they see as a racial gerrymander of Florida’s Senate District 16 with a better racial gerrymander,” Byrd’s attorneys wrote. “Their proposed alternatives just happen to be partisan gerrymanders, too.”

The Florida Supreme Court decision last week in the congressional case also focused heavily on equal-protection rights and the non-diminishment requirement of the Fair Districts Amendment. In that case, the Supreme Court upheld the state’s overhaul of North Florida’s Congressional District 5.

The district in the past stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee and was represented by Black Democrat Al Lawson. In pushing for the overhaul, DeSantis argued that keeping such a district would violate equal-protection rights.

In their filing Monday, the plaintiffs’ attorneys cited the Florida Supreme Court ruling in trying to bolster their equal-protection case against the Senate district. But attorneys for the Senate tried to draw a distinction between the cases, contending the Senate’s “use of race was limited, non-determinative, and implemented only after District 16 was configured under race-neutral criteria.”

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