A judge said plaintiffs calling for a court-issued congressional card should file a new lawsuit now that Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed it.
“No later than April 29, the plaintiffs and the intervening plaintiffs must show the reason why the court should not dismiss the case as disputable,” wrote U.S. District Judge Alan Winsor.
The order to show the reason comes days after Attorney General Laurel Lee’s lawyers called for the case to be dropped.
The Common Cause Florida, Fair Districts Now, and five Florida citizens filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in March. In the initial complaint, lawyers argued that the legislature and DeSantis were unlikely to reach an agreement on congressional cartography. At the time, DeSantis indicated that he would veto cards made by lawmakers and passed by the House of Representatives and Senate.
“As a result, there is a high probability that Florida’s political branches will fail to reach a consensus on adopting a legitimate congressional plan in time to be used in the upcoming 2022 election,” the original lawsuit said.
But since then, DeSantis has vetoed the cards. He then called the legislature at last week’s session, and lawmakers adopted a proposal drafted by DeSantis Deputy Chief of Staff Alex Kelly.
The governor signed a law Friday creating 28 new districts. This means that there is now a map that will show the exact number of representatives and all areas are balanced by population up to one person.
“Now that Florida’s obsolete congressional districts have been replaced by properly distributed congressional districts, there is no longer any controversy, and this court cannot provide the plaintiffs and plaintiffs with the relief they seek,” Lee’s attorneys said in a note.
This relief was a new map drawn by the court.
However, the federal case has also criticized DeSantis for being involved in the mapping process.
“The governor has repeatedly and inappropriately been involved in the process of redirecting Congress, and with each intervention, the proposed maps of the legislature deviate more and more from the required constitutional standards,” the original complaint said.
Plaintiffs may argue this week that the map prepared by DeSantis employees still needs to be replaced by the 2022 mid-term, although many legal experts believe it may take months or years to argue. that these cards violate state or federal law.
In 2015, the Florida Supreme Court discarded cards approved by the legislature for violating the U.S. Constitution Amendment for Fair Districts. But this happened three years and two election cycles after the application of the cards approved by the legislator.
A lawsuit has already been filed in state courts, funded by the National Foundation for the Restructuring of Former Attorney General Eric Holder, alleging that the DeSantis card contradicts the same constitutional provisions.
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