Tampa Bay Times editorial board: “Court protects black voters over incumbent”

Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida rejected U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown’s legal challenge against the redrawn Fifth Congressional District.

Back in 2015, Florida Supreme Court Justices E.C. Perry and Peggy Quince said that the new District 5 map is fair to minority voters. The Tampa Bay Times editorial board agreed in an editorial it released yesterday.

From the editorial: “Court protects black voters over incumbent”:

A federal court reached the correct conclusion this week in upholding a new North Florida congressional district drawn to enable black voters to elect the candidate of their choice. U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown's challenge that the new east-west district violated the federal Voting Rights Act was always more about preserving her political future than protecting the rights of black voters. The court's decision should bring some certainty to the congressional redistricting that has been tied up in court for four years.

As the congressional map approved last year by the Florida Supreme Court now sits, black voters appear to have increased opportunities to elect their preferred candidates. The new District 5, which Brown challenged, runs from Gadsden County in the west through parts of Tallahassee to Jacksonville in the east along the Florida-Georgia border. It has a voting age population of 45.1 percent black and is expected to easily elect a black candidate to Congress. A new District 10 in Orange County, another result of the latest map, also is considered "very likely'' by the federal court to elect a candidate supported by black voters. This would be a net gain for the state, and it injects a bit more sanity into the redistricting process that has been distorted for decades…

The panel of three federal judges on Monday rejected Brown's argument that the new district violates the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the black vote. The opinion points to performance analyses of the district that indicates black voters should easily elect the candidate of their choice, and it also dismissed Brown's complaint that too many black adults are in prison in the district and unable to vote for the district to perform as expected. "A win is a win, regardless of the margin of victory,'' the opinion said.

Read the full editorial here.