By Thomas Weber 
By: Thomas Weber
Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
TALLAHASSEE, FL – Republicans narrowly won the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022 with only 222 seats, but many congressional maps that provided comfortable seats for the party in that cycle have begun to crumble heading into the 2024 campaign. In New York, the court-approved map that led to four Republican pickups is facing another round of legal scrutiny, and some maps drawn by Republican controlled state legislatures in the South are facing the potential effects of a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling on racial gerrymandering.
In June, the United States Supreme Court upheld the ruling of a three judge District Court which found that the state congressional map in Alabama unfairly diluted Black voting power in a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Expanding upon the Fifteenth Amendment, which mandates that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” the Voting Rights Act specified further restrictions on racially discriminatory voting practices.
In striking down Alabama’s map, the District Court cited U.S. Supreme Court precedent from the 1986 Thornburg v. Gingles ruling, which stated that if “a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black and white voters,” the Voting Rights Act may be violated. Using this precedent, the District Court ruled and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that Alabama’s map illegally caused such an inequality. This ruling could extend to other southern congressional maps in states like Louisiana and South Carolina that have a smaller share of Black-majority districts than the state’s Black population, although separate cases exist for those states.
In Florida’s decennial redistricting process before the 2022 election, Republicans in the state legislature originally passed a map that preserved the loosely-shaped, heavily Democratic, and majority Black nature of the northern 5th district. This district voted for Democrat Joe Biden by a 27 point margin in the 2020 presidential election. However, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis contended that the district violated gerrymandering laws, such as the Florida constitution’s, voter approved amendment which requires that “districts must be compact…and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries.” DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, explained the governor’s stance that “the northern Florida district is an unconstitutional gerrymander that unnaturally connects communities in Jacksonville with communities hours away in Tallahassee and Gadsden counties.”
DeSantis himself claimed that the old 5th district can also be seen as an illegal racial gerrymander, describing it as a “200-mile gerrymander that divvies up people based on the color of their skin.” Eventually, Republicans in the legislature passed DeSantis’ own proposed map that included one extra Republican leaning district in north Florida, along with other newly configured districts across the state that are more favorable to Republicans based on the 2020 presidential election results. Although critics notice that north Florida no longer has a Black majority district, the governor has insisted that the map was drawn in a “race-neutral” process. The new 2nd district, which replaced the old 5th district in the Tallahassee area, supported Republican Donald Trump by 7.4 points in 2020. In Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project, Florida’s map is graded with a “B” rating in the category of “geographic features,” given its few county splits and mostly compact districts. However, the map is categorized overall as a “significant Republican advantage,” worthy of an “F” rating. Each proposed map can be viewed here.
In 2022, Al Lawson, the Democrat who represented the old 5th district, lost his seat to incumbent Republican Representative Neal Dunn in the 2nd district. Meanwhile, a newly configured district covering some of the Jacksonville area portion of the old 5th district elected Republican Aaron Bean to occupy its congressional seat.
Opponents of the current map, such as the NAACP and Common Cause Florida, are specifically focused on bringing back Lawson’s old district. In a pre-trial brief for a federal court trial before a three-judge panel, attorneys for these groups claimed that DeSantis was “viscerally opposed to any district in North Florida in which Black voters could elect a representative of their choice” and that the governor’s map has an unconstitutionally “adverse impact on Black voting power.” While 17% of Florida’s population is Black according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 estimates, Black voters do not have a majority in any of the new congressional districts. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Alabama’s old map based on the Voting Rights Act offers precedent which could aid these arguments in federal court.
These groups are making similar arguments at the state level regarding similar rules in the Florida constitution that redistricting maps may not “deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice.” Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh ruled on September 2 that the new north Florida districts violate the state constitution by restricting “Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice.” The final fate of the map is likely to be decided by the Florida Supreme Court, which rejected efforts to fast-track the case earlier in the process. The court will likely hear the case in the standard timeframe after a ruling from the 1st District Court of Appeal. If either the state or federal case leads to overturning the current map, a majority Black district in north Florida could return in time for the 2024 election.
While the fate of the Florida congressional map is still uncertain, the results of these cases will certainly have an impact on Florida’s rapidly shifting political atmosphere, as well as the balance of power in the narrowly divided U.S. House. If court rulings mandate a district similar to the Biden +27 district that Lawson once served, Florida Democrats would have a greater opportunity to win back at least one of the U.S. House seats that Republicans picked up in 2022. This would lessen the number of Trump-supporting districts, which could put some Republican U.S. Representatives in a challenging reelection position.
However, some Democratic U.S. Representatives could be faced with similar situations. GOP legislators in North Carolina have drawn a new congressional map for their state that could place Democratic incumbents in similar positions by removing districts that voted heavily for Biden. Redistricting began after the state Supreme Court reversed a previous ruling that the legislature engaged in illegal partisan gerrymandering before the 2022 election. Both parties won seven U.S. House seats in North Carolina under a court-approved map during the 2022 election, but the legislature has another opportunity to draw a map for the 2024 election.
Given that the qualifying period for congressional candidates is in late April, these cases likely need to be resolved by January if they are to avoid interference with the 2024 election. If necessary, lawmakers will also need time to draw a map that complies with the court rulings before the qualifying period. If these deadlines are not met, the implementation of any new map could cause confusion for the 2024 races.