Redistricting session puts Senate under the gun again

Fresh off a bruising 60-day session that ended Friday, the Florida Senate will remain in the spotlight this week when legislators travel back to the capital city Wednesday for a special session to redraw the court-rejected Senate map.

It will be a one-sided exercise, as the House leadership has decided to continue its "gentlemen's agreement" and allow the Senate to redraw its own lines. During the first redistricting round earlier this year, each chamber also drew its own maps but the court upheld only the House plan.

Both chambers, however, will return to Tallahassee Wednesday to convene their two-week session beginning at 1 p.m. House members will press a green button to indicate their attendance and then most of them will turn around and head home until ordered to come back to vote on the Senate map.

After the brief session convenes, the House and Senate redistricting committees are scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon for two hours each, to get updates on the March 9 Florida Supreme Court ruling. The court voted 5-2 to reject the Senate map, specifically invalidating eight proposed districts for violating the new anti-gerrymandering rules, while it upheld the House map in its entirety 7-0. 

Highlights of the Supreme Court ruling on redistricting

Here are some highlights of the Florida Supreme Court ruling today rejecting the Legislature's Senate map and validating the House map:

The court has a different role in redistricting than for ordinary legislative acts:

"Even though we continue to recognize the presumption of validity that governs ordinary legislative acts, the operation of this Court‘s process in apportionment cases is far different than the Court‘s review of ordinary legislative acts, and it includes a commensurate difference in our obligations. Challenges to the constitutionality of ordinary legislative acts passed by the Legislature must be brought in a trial court and then reviewed by a district court of appeal. This Court has mandatory jurisdiction in those circumstances only if the legislative act is found to be unconstitutional."

"The new requirements dramatically alter the landscape with respect to redistricting by prohibiting practices that have been acceptable in the past, such as crafting a plan or district with the intent to favor a political party or an incumbent. By virtue of these additional constitutional requirements, the parameters of the Legislature‘s responsibilities under the Florida Constitution, and therefore this Court‘s scope of review, have plainly increased, requiring a commensurately more expanded judicial analysis of legislative compliance."

Redistricting is creating rifts in the state's high court

As the Florida Supreme Court opens redistricting arguments Wednesday over the Legislature’s proposed maps, recent deliberations of the normally subdued court have signaled an internal feud over how to handle the issue.

Two of the court’s conservative justices, Charles Canady and Ricky Polston, appear to want to limit the court's review while the court’s two liberals, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince, appear to want them to dig deeper. In the middle are the swing votes, moderates Justices Fred Lewis, Jorge Labarga and James E.C. Perry.

In the last two weeks, Pariente and Quince have teamed up with two of the moderate judges to demand that legislators turn over their addresses as the non-partisan court is weighing into the once-a-decade partisan battle. Meanwhile, Canady and Polston have also aligned themselves with moderates to block a request from a coalition of voters groups who asked to submit a new version of their proposed map and stopped the Florida Democratic Party from admitting testimony from an expert witness.

"We’re in uncharted waters,’’ said Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, the chairman of the House’s redistricting committee. The new amendments, he said, are "giving the court the opportunity to look at it in a different way.”

The court will hear oral arguments in the case on Wednesday and, if the last two weeks are any indication, the panel could be prepared with some feisty questions. Story here.

Florida Democrats file first redistricting salvo in legislative maps

The Florida Democratic Party filed a 58-page brief this morning in the Florida Supreme Court, detailing the party's argument for why the court should reject the state House and Senate redistricting maps alleging they violation every one of the new standards established by the Fair District amendment number 5.

"The Legislature cannot credibly contest that the Senate and House Plans were drawn with the intent and result of favoring the Republican Party,'' the party argues. "Incontrovertible statistics demonstrate a significant partisan imbalance in both plans that simply cannot be justified on the basis of voter registration or election data, racial fairness, or any other legitimate rationale. Indeed, the Legislature even deviated from the fundamental principle of equal population to suit its partisan agenda. Not surprisingly, this politically gerrymandered plan is also drawn to protect many Republican incumbents."

The brief claims that the map "tortures and severs multiple communities," noting that the House plan creates districts that "twist and turn in every direction"

All briefs in the case are due to the high court by noon today. The court has set oral arguments for Feb. 29 and it must complete its decision by March 9.

The Democrat's brief was written by an all-star cast of lawyers that includes Joseph Hatchett, a former federal court judge who presided over the court's redrawing of the congressional districting lines in 1992 and Jon Mills, former House speaker and dean emeritus of the University of Florida College of Law. Download Florida Supreme Court Brief (with e-signature)

Voting shifts weaken Republican strength of Miami Dade's congressional seats

To understand the demographic shifts of Florida’s growing Hispanic vote, you need only look to South Florida, where three congressional districts long dominated by registered Republican voters are being crowded out by more Democrats and independents.

Tallahassee has taken notice. This week, legislators approved a redistricting plan that would offer safer and stronger districts for Miami’s three Cuban-American Republican lawmakers, U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and David Rivera.

Since 2002, the last time legislators reconfigured the political districts to reflect the new census data, the number of registered voters has soared in their districts.

Growth has been particularly strong among non-Cuban Hispanic voters, the majority of which have registered as independent, no party affiliation or Democrat, political analysts say.

The results have Democrats salivating while Republicans, armed with new maps, remain confident they will retain their stronghold. Story here.

Redistricting maps are reshuffling Florida's political landscape

For the last year, Broward Democratic Rep. Marty Kiar planned to run for the state Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Nan Rich of Weston.

But when the Senate released its redistricting maps in November, the Davie lawmaker was faced with a choice: run in a district based primarily in Palm Beach County, stay in his safe House district for two more years, or run in an open county commission district.

He chose to stay home and run for county commission. “It’s a nice time to be with my two-and-a-half year old, my new baby and my wife,’’ Kiar said, adding, “I’ve always wanted to serve for local office.”
Kiar is among a growing list of legislators deciding to move to new posts as Florida lawmakers complete their redistricting maps under new rules imposed by two constitutional amendments.

The Republican-dominated House voted 80-39 along party lines Thursday to give preliminary approval to three redistricting maps drawn according to the new anti-gerrymandering standards of the Fair Districts amendments approved by voters.

The amendments prohibit lawmakers — for the first time in Florida history — from drawing the districts with any intent to protect incumbents or political parties and the results have shaken up the political landscape from Tallahassee to Jacksonville and from St. Petersburg to Miami.

The disruption, however, is mostly apparent in the House, where 38 of the chamber’s 120 incumbents are been drawn into districts with another member. The Senate and Congressional maps, by contrast, don’t appear to end the political careers of any incumbents. Story here.

Appeals court throws out Brown and Diaz-Balart redistricting lawsuit

In a blow to two incumbent congressmen -- and the Florida House which has spent taxpayer money siding with them -- a federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to Florida's Amendment 6, added to the state constitution by voters to curb so-called gerrymandering of congressional districts.

From the Associated Press: The three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rebuffed claims by U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, and Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat, that the power to change congressional redistricting rules resides solely with the Legislature and not the voters through a referendum.

"The lawmaking power in Florida expressly includes the power of the people to amend their constitution, and that is exactly what the people did here in passing Amendment 6," wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus in the 32-page opinion, which affirmed a September ruling by a Miami federal judge. Full story here.

Weatherford to West: Legislative maps are not targeting you

As the House prepares to finish up the congressional redistricting maps later this week, Rep. Will Weatherford stepped in to quash a rumor that's been festering in GOP circles for the past month. The gist: Republicans are not targeting Allen West.

The controversial congressman from Broward County has earned a national reputation as a firebrand conservative. But his district is decidedly getting more liberal. Under the House congressional redistricting map, which is expected to be adopted by the Senate, West's district would move west into Plantation, where he lives, and also pick up a swath of Democratic voters.

A personal appeal from Broward Repubican Party Chairman Richard DeNapoli attempted to persuade lawmakers to shift the lines northward along the Palm Beach County coast, giving West a safer Republican district. His fellow Republicans even launched a web site, saveallenwest.com.

Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, is having none of this. He stepped into to fray Monday and posted this statement on his Facebook page:

 

House committee slaps down Fair Districts plan, blasts its 11th-hour critique

The House Redistricting Committee forcefully pushed back against a blistering critique of their redistricting maps from the Fair Districts group that proposed the new standards and Friday rejected the group's alternative maps before passing three of its own.

 “I think it’s an unfortunate and more likely a legal stunt that this has taken, and I frankly find it offensive personally,” said Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, chairman of the committee, referring to a 12-page letter sent by the coalition of voters groups.

Despite his disappointment, Weatherford offered the maps for the House and congressional districts submitted jointly by the League of Women Voters, La Raza and Common Cause as an alternative to the committee's staff-drawn maps -- which result in at least 38 lawmakers pitted against each other.

With the amendment teed up, the committee then roundly beat up on it, with Democrats joining Republicans to kill it. Weatherford even urged his colleagues to oppose his own amendment.

Fair Districts lambasts legislative maps, details alleged legal violations

The Fair Districts coalition broke its silence on the legislature's nearly completed redistricting maps late Thursday and delivered a 12-page letter to lawmakers lambasting their proposals for manipulating the political boundaries for partisan and incumbent advantage, in violation of the state Constitution.

"It appears that all maps under consideration were drawn with an intent to gain partisan advantage and/or to protect incumbents," the group wrote in its letter to House Redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford. "The Legislature’s refusal to follow this efficient and logical redistricting method proves that it wanted to retain its ability to surreptitiously favor a party or incumbents, and the numbers bear this out."

In short, the group which helped bring new state's redistricting standards to the state Constitution, accuses lawmakers of not only strategically protecting incumbents with the drawing of districts but doing it to strengthen weak districts, pick favorites in competitive areas, pack minority voters into districts and strategically secure a Republican majority for the next decade.