Before last week’s election, New York Times journalists posted their rankings of America’s most gerrymandered states. Placing Florida third worst, behind Texas and California, they wrote it was “hard to believe” that the Florida Constitution forbids what they saw.

“You certainly wouldn’t guess it by looking at the state’s new map, which contains 24 districts that voted for President Trump compared with four for Kamala Harris,” they wrote.

It was very easy to believe for the people who understood what was happening. The two courts responsible for enforcing Florida’s “Fair Districts” anti-gerrymandering amendments have become de facto arms of the Republican Party of Florida.

They are the First District Court of Appeal (DCA) in Tallahassee and the Florida Supreme Court. Both refused to interfere with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pre-election, mid-decade congressional gerrymander.

Flaunting it on Fox

The grotesque map was drawn to flip four of the eight seats held by Florida Democrats in Congress — including Rep. Darren Soto, who represents the formerly compact Orange-Osceola based District 9 (which now meanders south to wrap around the western shore of Lake Okeechobee and goes all the way to the coast in Sebastian and Vero Beach). DeSantis even flaunted the map on Fox News before sending it to the Legislature to be rubber-stamped.

Voting rights advocates promptly sued to restore the 2022 map for this election, but they ran up against an iron curtain in the judiciary. The DCA denied the plaintiffs’ request to send the case straight through to the Supreme Court, where the six justices whom DeSantis had appointed refused a plea to take jurisdiction.

That left the gerrymander in the unfriendly hands of the district court. Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the doomed case two weeks later.

The fix was in — almost. Voters had the final say, and they outsmarted the always-scheming DeSantis.

Democrats held their ground, and then some. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston switched to a redrawn District 20 and easily won a 12th term. Newcomer Pia Dandiya won the new, sprawling District 22 in Broward and three other counties that were drawn to favor a MAGA candidate. Kathy Castor won re-election in Tampa’s District 14. In South Florida, Rep. Jared Moskowitz ran in the coastal District 25 and won by almost five points. And though the total was not yet official Tuesday, Soto has a firm grip on a 1,506-vote lead in District 9.

Chalk that up to voters who paid attention. Soto’s low-key geniality hides the fact that he’s a force to be reckoned with: He is set to step into the chairmanship of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a 50-member bipartisan group that we hope works together to reverse cruel immigration policies.

A distortion of a distortion

The fact that gerrymanders backfired in Florida and across the nation doesn’t guarantee that they won’t succeed once Trump is gone.

Florida’s flawed map remains for at least the next two election cycles before the next required redistricting in 2032. It should still be overturned, and courts have at least left the door open for that argument to proceed..

The Florida map was already distorted after DeSantis’ handpicked Supreme Court allowed his 2022 gerrymander that disposed of North Florida’s only Black congressman, Al Lawson.

The election results reflect just how warped Florida’s congressional map has become. Unofficial returns show that more than 7.9 million Floridians voted for Republican or Democratic congressional candidates. They cast roughly half of their votes for Democrats, who trailed by less than 75,000 votes overall. Yet Democrats represent only 28.5% of the delegation. If DeSantis’ plot had succeeded, that percentage would have been halved to 14%.

The two Fair Districts initiatives, passed by voters in 2010, say no state or congressional district may be drawn “with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent” or result in denying or limiting the right of racial or language minorities “to elect representatives of their choice.” DeSantis and the Legislature acted in blatant defiance of that language.

Ideological court-packing

The Supreme Court was enforcing that before mandatory retirements and resignations let DeSantis stack the judicial deck with right-wing ideologues.

In Florida, as in Washington, the best constitutions are only as effective as the good faith of the people sworn to enforce them.

Looking ahead, fair districting proponents see no light at the end of the gerrymandering tunnel.

Florida’s “blatant and intentional constitutional violation should be taken seriously by the courts and held to be what it was, an attempt to once again make a mockery of the millions of voters who voted to make this sort of behavior unconstitutional,” says Ellen Friedin, a Miami lawyer who helped lead the League of Women Voters’ 2010 Fair Districts initiative campaign.

But when asked if she could see a way to make the courts uphold them, she replied, “I wish I could, but so far, the answer is no.”

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