A four-day trial resulting from a lawsuit over the district concluded on Thursday afternoon and judges must decide whether the constitutional rights of voters in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties were violated when the Legislature created the Senate district in 2022 that crossed from St. Petersburg over the water to Hillsborough County.
Florida was sued by three voters who are represented by the ACLU of Florida and the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law. The plaintiffs allege that the Legislature’s plan to connect Black populations from parts of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties violated their equal-protection rights by unjustifiably concentrating Black voters into District 16 by removing them from nearby District 18, reducing their influence there.
The defendants, Senate President Ben Albritton and Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, have denied that claim, saying that the maps were lawfully drawn up and previously approved as legally sound by the Florida Supreme Court.
But the defense’s arguments go beyond contesting the plaintiffs’ claims. Indeed the defense went on the offense both before and during the trial to allege that the ACLU of Florida’s lead attorney in the case, Nicholas Warren, worked behind the scenes with Democratic House and Senate staffers to try to get a partisan map approved.
To bolster that argument, attorneys representing the state called Matthew Isbell to the stand (remotely) on Thursday, their last witness.
Isbell is a Tallahassee-based data analyst and consultant who has worked with Democrats and Democratic-affiliated groups over the past decade. Text and direct Twitter messages between Isbell and Warren show how both men hoped that the Senate would adopt a map that kept Pinellas and Hillsborough counties intact.
Warren offered his own map to the Senate Committee on Reapportionment in late 2021 but did not disclose that he was a staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida. Upon discovery committee chair and Republican Sen. Ray Rodrigues sent a memo to all 40 state senators accusing Warren of violating Senate rules for not disclosing he worked for the ACLU of Florida.
Warren testified earlier this week that he drew the map on his own personal time and resources and not during work hours. Moreover he said Senate committee appearance forms do not require individuals to list their employers.
Isbell testified on Thursday that he believed the GOP-majority Legislature was motivated by partisan politics to bifurcate the city of St. Petersburg, an allegation that attorneys for the Florida Senate president’s office have strongly denied. After Isbell’s video appearance concluded, the closing statements began, starting with the plaintiffs.
‘Race predominated’
Warren said “race predominated in the drawing of the district.”To back up that statement, he played a video clip from a November 2021 committee hearing. The excerpt shows that Orange County Democratic Sen. Randolph Bracy asked Jay Ferrin, Senate Committee on Reapportionment staff director, why the newly proposed Senate District 16 district stretched across two counties.
Another video exchange showed Pasco County Republican Danny Burgess telling Bracy that Senate “staff” had said keeping the counties separate wasn’t possible, because it would lead to a “significant number of voters who would be disenfranchised.” At the time Burgess was the chair of the Senate reapportionment subcommittee.
Ferrin agreed with Burgess, saying it would result in a “wide diminishment” that would ultimately disenfranchise Black voters in Pinellas County.
Bracy pressed, asking how much the Black vote would be diminished and Ferrin replied “close to 30%.”
Failing to make the case?
Daniel Nordby, who was representing Ben Albritton in his official capacity as president of the Florida Senate, and Mohammad Jazil, who was representing Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, shot back in their closing statements.Nordby said the plaintiffs had to prove that race was a predominant factor in the creation of Senate District 16, but that they fell short.
“Plaintiffs have not come close to doing so,” Nordby said.
He emphasized how Ferrin had recognized the constitutional requirements for drawing up districts – which is that districts should be compact, and when possible, utilize existing political and geographic boundaries.
Nordby said Ferring met the Fair Districts requirements noting that boundaries such as I-275, the Hillsborough River, and 22nd Avenue North in St. Petersburg, a major artery, were used to configure the Senate district.
Nordby said race was taken into consideration, because “it had to be.” He also dismissed the three alternative maps drawn up for the plaintiffs by Pennsylvania State University professor of statistics Cory McCartan that keep Hillsborough and Pinellas counties separate.
And he then addressed the peculiar situation regarding Warren, saying, “This case is an odd one.”
Nordby asserted Warren had essentially “laundered” his map through the alternative presented during the trial by McCartan.
He also questioned why none of the lawmakers that plaintiff attorneys had indicated could be witnesses in the case – Sen. Darryl Rouson, House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell and most notably former Bracy, the “alleged lynchpin” for the plaintiff’s case, never showed up.
Bracy was a scheduled witness but failed to appear earlier in the week, much to the disappointment of the ACLU attorneys. When contacted by phone on Tuesday by a representative from the three-judge panel, Bracy said he hadn’t seen the subpoena until that very day and said that he had already told plaintiff attorneys that he did not intend to show up.
Representing Byrd, Jazil said all of the proposed Senate maps that the ACLU had presented during the trial were examples of partisan and racial gerrymandering, and cited his text messages to House and Senate staffers involved with the reapportionment process.
A ‘contrived kerfuffle’
In response to the defense’s closing arguments, Daniel Tilley, another attorney with the ACLU of Florida, noted how no lawmaker had testified. Tilley said all of the attention focused on Warren was a “contrived kerfuffle” that found no evidence to support the idea that members of the Senate were influenced by his map. It was, he said, a “spectacular failure.”During the four-day trial there were hours of detailed descriptions by experts that dealt with how to draw legislative districts that were logically configured and not oddly shaped.
The Florida Senate District 16 seat is held by Rouson, who resides in St. Petersburg. Several Tampa-based constituents in the district complained earlier in the trial that he was not as accessible to meet in Hillsborough County, though defense attorneys said he has district offices in the county in Tampa and Brandon.
The three-judge panel that will decide the case includes two of them who are Trump appointees. The panel was led by Andrew L. Brasher, who serves in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Accompanying him was U.S. Senior District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell and U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Barber, both of whom serve on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Brasher and Barber were appointed by Trump during his first term as president in 2019.
If they rule in favor of the plaintiffs, their hope would be that the Florida Senate could create and approve a new map of the district in time for the 2026 election.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2025.