As he promised Governor Ron DeSantis Tuesday vetoed the Legislature’s congressional re-districting maps saying - “We have a responsibility to produce maps for our citizens that do not contain unconstitutional racial gerrymanders." He has called a Special Legislative Session for Tuesday April 19 in order to hammer out what he called "lawful congressional voting districts for Florida."
The problem with the Legislature’s maps said the governor is that lawmakers sought to preserve, and not diminish, the current racial make-up of Florida Congressional District #5. “In their zeal to try to comply with what the Florida Constitution says, they forgot to make sure that what they were doing complied with the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” said the Governor.
The memorandum in support of his veto states that both the House and Senate's proposed redistricting maps assign "voters primarily on the basis of race." It cites a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Miller Vs. Johnson which states - "Just as the state may not, absent extraordinary justification, segregate citizens on the basis of race" the State also "may not separate its citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race."
Read the memorandum in support of the Governor's veto HERE.
There was a time, DeSantis said, when it was appropriate to consider race in redistricting. “There was pervasive evidence, in the middle part of the 20th century, of basically not allowing very many people to vote based on race," he said. "So you had very tough medicine. But there was a showing as to why using race was something that was appropriate.”
There is no "showing" in the maps proposed by the Legislature, according to the Governor's argument. Race is not factored into the map that his administration has proposed, he said.
"If you did a map along the lines we had proposed, they’ll be (opponents) that will say that the big District in north Florida, District 5, that that’s ‘diminishment’," said DeSantis. "And they’re going to ask courts to put that District back in, and they’re going to cite that provision in the Florida Constitution. We will obviously say it’s unconstitutional to draw a District like that where race is the only factor.”
“We’re not going to have it drawn by a court," said the Governor. "We have to work through this. It’s absolutely ... the responsibility of the legislature to produce a map that can actually be signed into law.”
