A major basis for today’s Florida Supreme Court decision is that the Florida legislature wrongly believed or purported to believe that the Voting Rights Act required raising the population of black voters to certain high levels.  Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision this Term in the Alabama racial-gerrymandering cases, the Florida court found that the VRA did not require raising the black populations to these levels.  The Florida court concluded that the Republican legislature had done this for partisan political purposes, ie, as a way to pack Democratic voters into a few districts and limit their power elsewhere.  Because Florida’s Constitution now bans partisan gerrymandering, as a result of a voter initiative, these districts therefore were in violation of Florida law.

This is a particularly interesting ramification of the Supreme Court’s Alabama decision.  Today’s decision makes the Supreme Court’s decision relevant even in cases that involve state-law claims, rather than only those — like the one at issue in the Alabama cases — that involve the U.S. Constitution.  In the Alabama cases, the claim is that the State engaged in an unconstitutional racial gerrymander when it used race to draw districts beyond the point at which the VRA required race to be taken into account.  In today’s case, the Florida court instead concluded, in essence, that the State had used the VRA as an excuse to engage in partisan gerrymandering.  Florida is now the fourth state, at least, in which statewide redistricting plans are being challenged based on the principles recognized in the Supreme Court’s Alabama decision.  The federal court in Virginia has struck down a congressional district there, and the issues are currently pending before the North Carolina Supreme Court.

To be more specific about today’s Florida decision, a “focal point” of the litigation, in the Court’s words, was Congressional District 5, where Rep. Corrine Brown is the incumbent.  This district had an East-West configuration before redistricting; it was changed to a North-South configuration based on the assertion that this was necessary to avoid “retrogression,” under the VRA, in the ability of minorities in that area to elect a candidate of choice.  From 1992, when this district was first created, through today, it had elected an African-American candidate; during this period, the black voting-age population (BVAP) ranged from around 43-47%.  In the 2012 redistricting, the Florida legislature increased the BVAP above 50%; the Florida courts invalidated that action.  On a second try, the legislature made the district 48.1% BVAP, again on the claim that the VRA required this.  Though legislative staff had proposed a plan in which this district remained drawn east to west, with a BVAP of 44.96%, the legislature took the position that the VRA barred it from dropping the BVAP below 48%.  But the Florida court, relying on the Alabama decision, held that black voters would still have the “ability to elect” at a 45% BVAP and hence there was no legitimate need to reconfigure the district so dramatically.

This attempted change to how District 5 was designed was said to be the “linchpin to the Legislature’s effort to draw a map that favors the Republican Party.”  On a quick read, the Florida court appears to have struck down some of the other congressional districts for the same reason, while striking down yet others as illegal partisan gerrymanders for other reasons.

This is an important decision, for many reasons.  We now have a court decision enforcing voter-initiated prohibitions on partisan gerrymandering.  Time will tell what the net effect will be, since the court gave the Florida legislature another chance to draw these seven congressional districts in a way consistent with the state Constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering.