[EL] Breaking: Florida Supreme Court strikes down state Senate maps, upholds state House maps

[Nicholas Stephanopoulos]

This strikes me as a very heartening decision for two reasons. First, it's
remarkable that a court with a Republican-appointed majority would strike
down a district plan largely because the plan was intended to benefit
Republicans. This level of impartiality is obviously uncommon in the
redistricting context. Second, the decision demonstrates quite powerfully
that courts *can* successfully evaluate partisan gerrymandering claims. The
court invalidated the senate plan because an array of indicia all indicated
that the plan was motivated by impermissible intent: the numbering of the
districts, the fact that incumbents weren't pitted against one another, the
consistent under-population of Republican districts, the existence of many
non-compact districts, the state's improper retrogression analysis, the
state's shifting explanations as to the boundaries it sought to respect,
etc. But the court didn't invalidate the house plan because these indicia
were not present to the same extent (and nor was the level of partisan bias
as high). The court therefore showed that it could make subtle distinctions
between different plans -- and that a partisan gerrymandering test can
operate more like a scalpel than a meat-cleaver.

There are certainly issues I wish the court had explored further: the
plans' levels of partisan bias and electoral responsiveness, evidence about
intent drawn from the legislative process, how well the plans respected
geographic communities of interest, etc. But for those who want the
judiciary to guard against redistricting abuses, today's decision is a
landmark -- perhaps the best example in recent American history of a court
directly tackling the thorny issue of partisan gerrymandering instead of
hiding behind claims of non-justiciability.

Nick

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 11:26 AM, dasmith <dasmith at ufl.edu> wrote:

> I've posted the decision here:
>
> http://electionsmith.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/sc12-1.pdf
>
>
> --
> daniel a. smith, ph.d.
> professor&   uf research foundation professor (2010-2012)
> coordinator, political science internship program
> department of political science
> 003 anderson hall              |  phone: 352-273-2346
> po box 117325                  |  fax: 352-392-8127
> university of florida          |  email: dasmith at ufl.edu
> gainesville, fl 32611-7325     |  www.clas.ufl.edu/users/dasmith/
> http://twitter.com/#!/electionsmith
>
>
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