The district with Sarasota County was not one of eight specifically highlighted by the Supreme Court in its July 9 decision striking down the congressional map.
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The two sides clashed during an August special session on congressional redistricting, resulting in courts taking over the effort to cast those boundaries.
The testimony came on the first day of a hearing before Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, who will decide which of seven plans – or which combination of aspects of those plans – will be recommended to the Florida Supreme Court to break a logjam over lines for the state’s 27 congressional districts. “Drawing the maps is the job of the Legislature, or alternatively of this (Supreme) Court if the Legislature continues to abdicate its duty”. Lewis past year ordered a change to the map and legislators held a rare summer special session to make changes.
Lewis eventually decided he would consider the evidence of Democratic involvement. After ensuring neither option diluted the Hispanic community, Poreda says the drafters chose the map based on compactness. The Legislature’s inability to agree prompted the Supreme Court to order the issue back to the courtroom.
Galvano and a Senate attorney, Raoul Cantero, noted that the House never officially considered the Galvano proposal, although House leaders publicly called it an improvement over prior Senate plans.
Maps submitted by King’s clients and the Romo plaintiffs would swap different groups of territory between Curbelo’s district and Ros-Lehtinen’s district to ensure that the two districts have equal population once Homestead is consolidated. Brown cited recent remarks by a GOP state legislator who was secretly recorded telling other party officers that the key to defeating Brown lies in the district’s number of state prison inmates, who are disproportionately black but are unable to vote.
The judge will have to choose which map best conforms to the constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2010 that mandated districts be drawn without partisan advantage.
Lawyers for the House have asserted in one motion that the maps “were drawn, reviewed, discussed, modified, and approved in a closed process, in complete darkness, by national political operatives”.
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David King, an attorney for the League of Women Voters and other groups, said in a statement that “the Legislature would rather attack and try to smear the plaintiffs in this case, than defend the constitutionality of its own maps. The fact that plaintiffs’ maps, despite their origins, are pending before the trial court for a possible recommendation to this court should dismay and disturb all Floridians”.
