Cubanos Pa’lante challenges FL House redistricting map as “Racially Gerrymandered”

A Summary of the Complaint

The Fourteenth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution includes the Equal Protection Clause, which states that no state can deny any person equal protection under the law. From this amendment and the Civil Rights Movement came the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. These federal laws prohibit racial discrimination in voting.

Racial discrimination in voting can happen in many ways. This lawsuit is specifically about how the Florida Legislature inappropriately drew these districts along racial lines unfairly treating the Hispanic community in South Florida.

There are some exceptions when race can be a core factor when redistricting. Section 2 of the VRA and the Fair Districts Amendments to the Florida Constitution permit the state to consider race above other factors to protect minority voters
under certain circumstances. 

Among these prerequisites are the Gingles preconditions set out in the U.S. Supreme Court case Thornburg v. Gingles (1986). These conditions must be met in order for the state to subordinate other factors to race in their redistricting plans:

1. A minority group must demonstrate it is large and compact enough to constitute a majority in a single-member district.
2. A minority group must demonstrate it is politically cohesive.
3. A minority group must demonstrate the majority group votes sufficiently as a group to defeat the minority group’s preferred candidate.

While they may have applied in the past, the second and third preconditions do not apply to the Hispanic population in South Florida as of 2022, when the districts we are challenging were drawn. In drawing the 2022 redistricting maps, politicians undermined, rather than protected, fair treatment of minority voters.

South Florida’s Hispanic population is not politically cohesive, but rather nuanced, multifaceted, and diverse demographic with a range of political behavior and preferences. Nor does the white majority vote as a bloc to defeat the Hispanic community’s preferred candidates as required for the third Gingles precondition.