A Leon County judge has dismissed top Florida legislative leaders, including House Speaker Chris Sprowls and Senate President Wilton Simpson, as defendants in a lawsuit challenging the state’s congressional redistricting map.
Judge J. Lee Marsh dismissed claims against Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor), Simpson (R-Trilby), Senate Reapportionment Committee Chairman Ray Rodrigues (R-Estero) and House Reapportionment Committee Chairman Thomas Leek (R-Ormond Beach). Marsh’s July 17 decision concluded that the lawmakers were not proper parties in the lawsuit brought by the Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, League of Women Voters of Florida and other groups because they have immunity from lawsuits that focus on their legislative duties.
Attorneys for the defendants in the case, which seeks to overturn the redistricting map because it wipes out a Black-majority congressional district in the northern part of the state, argued that naming the legislative leaders as defendants was redundant because the Florida House of Representatives and the state Senate are named separately.
Even one of the plaintiffs’ legal teams, however, doesn’t see the judge’s decision as causing irreparable harm to their legal arguments on voting rights.
“While (members of the League of Women Voters’ legal team) did find it important to name the leaders when filing to ensure all bases were covered, they do not anticipate this to have much of an impact on the overall case since the respective chambers are still involved,” the Florida league’s spokesman, Blake Summerlin, told the Florida Record in an email.
Plaintiffs argue in the litigation that the congressional map violates the so-called “Fair Districts” amendments to the Florida Constitution, which say that the drawing of the districts should focus on fair representation for racial and language minorities, not favor a single political party and be contiguous.
Another judge who previously oversaw the lawsuit issued a temporary injunction against the congressional map, but that ruling was overturned by an appeals court, which sent the case back to the Second Judicial Circuit Court in Leon County for trial.