U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., announced Thursday she will go to federal court to stop congressional redistricting, insisting that last month’s Florida Supreme Court decision violated the federal Voting Rights Act.
Brown held a media event in Orlando, noting the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, to announce her lawsuit. Responding to the state Supreme Court decision, the Florida Legislature will convene in Tallahassee next week to redo the congressional districts. The Supreme Court found the current districts violate two state constitutional amendments on redistricting that voters approved in 2010.
A fierce critic of those amendments, Brown insisted the decision violated federal law and filed suit.
Brown’s district will drastically change if the base map goes through. Brown’s district currently winds through North Florida to the central part of the state, taking in parts of Alachua, Clay, Duval, Lake, Marion, Orange, Putnam, Seminole and Volusia counties, making it a very secure seat for Democrats. But the seat in the base map is far less secure, heading west from Brown’s Jacksonville base, taking in all of Baker, Gadsden, Hamilton and Madison counties, most of Jefferson and Leon counties and almost half of Duval County.
"I believe categorically that the decision by the Florida Supreme Court to order a redraw of the state's congressional map is a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, since the newly configured maps clearly will bring about minority vote dilution and hamper the ability of the state's minority residents to elect a candidate of choice,” Brown insisted on Thursday. “Certainly, the mandate given to the Florida state Legislature to convene a special session did not contain a requirement to hold hearings statewide, which would have allowed Florida voters to voice their concerns and priorities regarding their preferences for federal representation. Beyond a doubt, it is particularly important for African-American and Latino communities to be heard, whose representation and voting power will be severely impacted by redistricting.”
Brown noted African-Americans across the nation and in Florida gained greater congressional representation after the Voting Rights Act but that the Suprmee Court decision hindered this progress.
“It is obvious that if the court forces the Legislature to overturn the current congressional District 5 map, they will be ignoring the essential redistricting principle of maintaining communities of interest or minority access districts,” Brown insisted. "Certainly, minority communities do not live in compact, cookie-cutter-like neighborhoods, and excessive adherence to district “compactness,” while ignoring the maintenance of minority access districts, fragments minority communities across the state. The current District 5 map is essentially the same as the previous District 3 map, which was drawn by the courts and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, in adherence to the principles of the Voting Rights Act. In particular, there is one critical section of the Voting Rights Act which strictly prohibits the fracturing of communities of minority voters into a variety of districts. This element of the act is essential in the maintenance of minority representation not just in the state of Florida, but across the entire nation.”
Brown also pointed to her initial attempts to run for Congress and how she and other African-American Democrats had to go to court back then as well.
“For most of my adult life, there were no minority members of Congress elected from Florida, and few African-Americans elected to the Florida House and Senate. That changed in 1992 when I was elected to Congress together with Rep. Carrie Meek from Miami and Rep. Alcee Hastings from Fort Lauderdale,” Brown said.
“Yet to obtain this seat I had to file a lawsuit,” she added. “I fought for four African-American seats in the courts, and in the end, we reached a compromise and got three, again – based on the tenets of The Voting Rights Act. As a result of this lawsuit, in 1993, after nearly 130 years, the state of Florida had three African-American federal representatives. And for the first time in many years, minority community members in the state were represented by people who truly understood them; who grew up in the same neighborhoods and attended the same churches and schools as they did. I firmly believe that I, as an African-American legislator, can understand and empathize with the issues my constituents confront on a profound level since I share the same racial and cultural background as they do, and have had to battle many of the same challenges and prejudices.
“District 5 in Florida and minority access districts across the nation cannot, and will not be eliminated, particularly after the hard-fought civil rights gains we have made during the last 50 years,” Brown concluded. “As a people, African-Americans have fought too hard to get to where we are now, and we certainly are not taking any steps backwards.”
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN
