Protections for minority voters are at the center of a Florida redistricting case

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — One of a series of recent legal cases related to race and redistricting comes to Florida’s high court Thursday.

Voting rights groups challenging the state’s congressional map are counting on the Florida Supreme Court to reinstate a district that gave Black voters in the northern part of the state the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice.

“We want to make sure that we are protecting Black congressional representation,” said Genesis Robinson, interim executive director for Equal Ground Education Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “That’s why we’re challenging this unconstitutional map.”

Ahead of the 2022 elections, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis succeeded in his push to reconfigure the former 5th Congressional District — which stretched about 200 miles across North Florida and picked up voters in Tallahassee and Jacksonville. The GOP-led state legislature had sought to preserve the district, until DeSantis took an unprecedented step for a governor and intervened with a map of his own that eliminated it.

The old 5th district was last held by former Democratic Rep. Al Lawson, who’s African American. That district was carved into four districts, and much of the area, now the 2nd district, is held by Rep. Neal Dunn, a white Republican.

“There's a high concentration of Black folks who live in that region,” Robinson explained. “They have not had a chance to elect the candidate of their choice” since the new map took effect.

On Thursday, the state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments from attorneys representing plaintiffs and the state, and then the court will decide whether to uphold the map or order a new one that restores Black representation in the region.

The case comes before the state’s