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

[Douglas Johnson]

A caution before anyone gets too excited about national implications of the
FL ruling: the Court only intervened because of the specific redistricting
language in the Florida constitution. This was not a general claim that
partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional under due process or any other
general provisions of the state or federal constitutions. Nor was the Court
intervening by choice: the Florida constitution also specifically states
that the State Supreme Court MUST review and approve legislative
redistricting plans prior to implementation. The Florida constitution does
not have a similar "must review" provision for Congressional redistricting.
And the Court limited its review only to the redistricting criteria
specifically written into the Florida constitution by the voters (which is
why it did not venture into the other topics mentioned below.)

 

- Doug

 

Douglas Johnson

Fellow

Rose Institute of State and Local Government

m 310-200-2058

o 909-621-8159

douglas.johnson at cmc.edu

 

 

 

 

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Nicholas
Stephanopoulos
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 10:21 AM
To: dasmith
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Breaking: Florida Supreme Court strikes down state Senate
maps, upholds state House maps

 

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 <http://twitter.com/#%21/electionsmith> 


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