With oral arguments completed, plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit seeking to invalidate Jacksonville’s City Council districts as discriminatory toward Black voters expect a decision before city elections are held in the spring of next year.
Voting rights groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Florida Rising and the ACLU of Florida filed the litigation earlier this year, arguing that the city’s redistricting plan for the coming decade unconstitutionally packs Black residents into four of the city’s 14 council districts.
Last week, attorneys for the city and the plaintiffs took part in oral hearings in the Middle District of Florida.
"The judge did a great job of trying to understand and hear the arguments that both sides are presenting,” Florida Rising’s senior director of programs and advocacy, Mone Holder, told the Florida Record.
A spokesperson for Jacksonville said the city could not comment on the pending litigation, but the SPLC expects timely action on the plaintiffs’ call for a preliminary injunction against the use of City Council and school board district maps in Jacksonville.
“We can’t say exactly when a ruling on the motion for a preliminary injunction will be issued since it’s entirely at the discretion of the court, but we do expect a decision in time for the 2023 elections,” Jack Genberg, the SPLC’s staff attorney for voting rights, told the Record in an email. “We expect a ruling will also come in time for new maps to be drawn, if the court grants the preliminary injunction and stays the racially gerrymandered maps.”
The way the city moved to draw up the new districts does not meet the burdens required by federal voting-rights case law, according to the plaintiffs’ motion for an injunction.
“Because race was the predominant factor motivating district lines, the city must satisfy strict scrutiny by proving that its use of race ‘serves a “compelling interest”’ and is ‘narrowly tailored’ to that end,” the motion states.
The motion also contends that the alleged racial gerrymandering of the City Council districts has been a part of Jacksonville history for at least the past three decades.