The NAACP and the League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to have Amendment 7, a legislatively-drafted redistricting proposal, tossed from the November ballot, saying it is dishonest.
We feel that this is a trick amendment and a blatant effort to fool the voters, said League of Women Voters President Deirdre Macnab. Other plaintiffs include former Comptroller Bob Milligan and former environmental official Nathaniel Reed, both Republicans.
The measure was put on the ballot by lawmakers who said that two other amendments cleared for voters to consider in November, Amendments 5 and 6, aren't workable. Those two amendments seek to spell out that the Legislature can't try to lock down party or incumbent power when drawing political boundaries.
We had over a dozen meetings on the issue, and no one could even tell us how 5 and 6 worked, incoming Senate President Mike Haridoplos, one of the architects of Amendment 7, said Friday. So the Legislature pushed for the third amendment to spell out that whatever is done by 5 and 6, if they pass, minority interests and communities of interest must be preserved.
We felt it imperative that we place on the ballot, protection for minorities so their representation doesn't diminish, said Haridoplos, R-Melbourne.
Backers of Amendments 5 and 6, put on the ballot through the signature process and cleared by the Supreme Court for inclusion in November's election, say they don't do anything to diminish minority representation, they only bar lawmakers from favoring incumbents or parties when drawing the lines.
But if the incumbent is a minority, and lawmakers draw that seat in a way that doesn't favor an incumbent, they may lose minority representation and run afoul of federal racial equality provisions, Republican lawmakers - and some black Democrats - said in pushing for Amendment 7.
Backers of the original two amendments, however, say the Legislature's amendment would simply allow the redistricting process to remain as is.
This amendment is nothing if not misleading, said Ron Meyer, the lawyer representing the League of Women Voters, the NAACP and others suing to have the courts throw the Legislature's amendment off the ballot. What it does is, it undermines what Amendments 5 and 6 clearly require.
Opponents of the Legislature's amendment also throw the what does it do? argument right back at the lawmaker proponents. They say it's not clear what the Legislature's language means.
Our whole lawsuit is based upon the premise that this amendment does many things that are misleading in the way they're worded, Meyer said. It's written with such wabba dabba that constitutional lawyers have trouble figuring out what it does, much less the ordinary voter.
Macnab said lawmakers simply don't want to take the politics out of drawing the district lines for themselves. This would enable the legislators to go right back to the status quo of not having to follow rules at all, Macnab said. They are just trying to hold on to their power.
Haridoplos disputed that.
We are bound by federal case law, Haridoplos said, noting that the courts may have to approve what the Legislature does and that there are a number of precedents set out in court opinions that lay out a framework. We can't just go haphazardly draw our own lines.
The lawsuit was filed in Leon County Circuit Court and assigned to Judge James Shelfer. No hearing date has been set.
