Tallahassee, FL BY Brandon Larrabee, (News Service of Florida) – Arguing that an east-west configuration for her district “combines far-flung communities worlds apart culturally and geographically,” lawyers for U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown asked a federal judge Tuesday to void Florida’s latest congressional redistricting plan.
The complaint marks the next phase of a legal battle over the state’s political boundaries that has raged for nearly four years. The first two drafts of a congressional plan — approved by the Legislature in 2012 and tweaked in 2014 — were thrown out by state courts for violating a voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering.
But the reorientation of Brown’s congressional district, which has long ambled from Jacksonville to Orlando but now would run from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west, prompted the Democratic congresswoman to file suit this year against the change. After the Florida Supreme Court officially approved the new district early this month, Brown was allowed to update her case Tuesday.
“Black voters have reaped substantial benefits by being in a district in which they can elect a candidate of their choice, including having a representative who understands the needs of the community she represents, brings infrastructure money to the district, helps black residents obtain government contracts, brings job fairs to the district, and is very accessible to her constituents,” the complaint says.
Read the full story at Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article52151395.html
