Tampa Bay Times: “A Florida judge signaled skepticism Thursday that he could uphold Gov. Ron DeSantis’ congressional districts after Florida’s lawyers admitted the districts violate the state constitution.
Lawyers for the governor and the GOP-controlled Legislature conceded that their congressional map reduced Black voting power, but they argued that the alternative — a Jacksonville-to-Gadsden County district that protects Black voters’ electoral influence — would violate the U.S. Constitution.
2nd Judicial Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh, a Rick Scott appointee, repeatedly pressed the state’s lawyers on whether they were asking him to contradict precedent and decide on his own that the Florida Supreme Court’s previous decisions were invalid.
Marsh didn’t rule on the map, but he said he would give the order his undivided attention next Thursday and Friday.
“If you’re laying a record for the Florida Supreme Court to throw out its own ruling, you can do that,” Marsh told the governor’s lawyers. “You’re saying the Florida Supreme Court violated the U.S. Constitution in what it did (last decade). I’m not going there. I don’t think I have the power to say, ‘You know what, the Florida Supreme Court got it wrong, but that’s their business or the U.S. Supreme Court’s to do.’””