Democrats Win Challenge to Florida Gerrymander, Likely Picking Up One More Seat on the Path Back to House Majority

Following an agreement in a Florida redistricting dispute, Democrats look positioned to pick up a seat in the U.S. House, bolstering their effort to retake the chamber in 2024. The agreement will allow voting rights groups to push for the redrawing of a formerly majority-Black congressional district, while the groups agree to let stand the rest of the state’s map, which tilts toward Republicans. The agreement in Florida is just the latest in a string of redistricting victories in court for the Democrats. Beyond the Sunshine State, Democrats in Wisconsin and New York are looking to gain an advantage ahead of next year’s election by using the courts to redraw congressional maps, while Alabama faces pressure from the federal courts to add another majority-Black House district. The Florida dispute centered on a Tallahassee-area congressional district that had a majority of Black voters prior to last year’s redistricting. It was one of the districts challenged in a lawsuit contending that voters’ civil rights were violated when Republicans redrew the congressional maps, arguing that the intent of the district lines was to dilute the voting power of Black Floridians. The agreement reached between the state and the voting rights groups who filed the lawsuit states that their challenge will now be limited to the Tallahassee-area district. In exchange for focusing their case on that district, the groups say they will drop their opposition to congressional maps in other parts of the state.“This is a promising step forward for Black voters whose voting power was disgracefully targeted by Governor DeSantis in his quest for artificial power,” the director of litigation and policy for the left-leaning National Redistricting Foundation, Olivia Mendoza, said. “Floridians deserve fair maps — and success in this case will deliver a major step in that direction.” The foundation was founded and is led by President Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder. Last year, after Mr. DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature redrew the Sunshine States’s congressional district maps, the GOP picked up four congressional seats in Florida — the current margin of the House majority. Republicans now hold 20 of the 28 House seats in Florida, partly as a result of the maps. Florida is just one of many states facing legal challenges to its congressional maps, all of which could result in easier pick-up opportunities for the Democratic Party. One lawsuit in Wisconsin threatens to upend the state’s congressional maps, which currently skew heavily in favor of the GOP. The election of a liberal state supreme court justice, tilting the political balance on the court, makes probable the redrawing of legislative maps in the state, buoying Democrats’ hopes for retaking the House next year. Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose victory secured a liberal majority on the Wisconsin supreme court in April, made national headlines for openly declaring her personal and would-be judicial opinions on issues like redistricting. “I say, yes, those maps are rigged,” the justice told PBS Wisconsin during the campaign. Currently, the Wisconsin maps skew heavily in favor of the GOP. Last year, Republican candidates for the U.S. House won 55 percent of the statewide vote but 75 percent of the available House seats. In the 2018 state assembly elections, Democratic candidates won 53 percent of the statewide vote but just 36 of the 99 seats in the lower chamber.A legal battle in the Empire State also threatens to put Republicans at a disadvantage. A challenge to redraw the state’s congressional maps is making its way through the judiciary, with the most likely outcome being that the liberal majority on the New York court of appeals — the highest judicial body in the state — will rule to redraw the congressional maps. One former Republican congressman representing the Empire State, John Faso, called the Democrats’ challenge to New York’s congressional maps a “Hail Mary” that is unlikely to succeed. “It’s just speculation at this point,” he told the Sun. “I think we’re going to win the case at the court of appeals. The constitution is clear — we don’t have mid-decade redistricting.”Alabama, too, is also facing a challenge to its congressional map, the outcome of which could net the Democrats one more seat on their path to flipping just four in order to retake the majority. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that ordered the Alabama state legislature to redraw its congressional maps, contending that having only one majority-Black district out of the seven seats allotted to the state violated the Voting Rights Act. Black Alabamians make up more than a quarter of the state population. The legislature has so far refused to comply with the appellate court’s order.

Democrats Win Challenge to Florida Gerrymander, Likely Picking Up One More Seat on the Path Back to House Majority

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