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As the legal battle over Florida\u2019s newly drawn Congressional maps takes shape, a Jacksonville City Councilmember is pushing for a map redraw at the local level as well.<\/p>\n
With the U.S. Supreme Court ruling race can only be considered when drawing district lines in extremely limited circumstances, Jacksonville City Councilmember Rory Diamond (R-District 13) believes the city\u2019s current council map may be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Back in 2022, the City Council passed a map<\/a>, which was incredibly similar to the map that had existed prior.<\/p>\n Groups, including the NAACP sued<\/a>, claiming the map perpetuated racially gerrymandered districts spanning back decades that packed Black voters primarily into four council districts.<\/p>\n A judge later agreed<\/a>, and imposed an alternative map, which remains in place today.<\/p>\n But Diamond argued the current map, which was drawn by plaintiffs involved in the case, also uses race as a factor and would not hold up under the new U.S. Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue here is that if you look at the actual districts, they are concentrating Black Democrats in one district or two districts and that\u2019s against the law now,\u201d said Diamond. \u201dIt doesn\u2019t pass strict scrutiny. You have to have a good reason to do it, and we don\u2019t have one.\u201d<\/p>\n But Duval Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland argued the evidentiary record does not support Diamond\u2019s position that race was a primary factor in drawing the current lines.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a map is gerrymandered by race, you\u2019ll see lines going out to pockets of communities to try to gather a few more of one particular race versus another. You do not see that in this map,\u201d Holland said.<\/p>\n Diamond would need support from his colleagues to initiate mid-decade redistricting — that is unless a court challenge was to force their hands.<\/p>\n \u201cWhich I know several people are looking. And there are people who would be good plaintiffs for that who are talking about suing,\u201d Diamond said. \u201dIf you were to sue this city, Judge Howard would have to reopen this and then her decision would be subject to 11th Circuit and Supreme Court oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n There\u2019s also still a major constitutional question left to be answered in Florida as it relates to redistricting.<\/p>\n That is whether the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s recent ruling might invalidate Florida\u2019s Fair Districts Amendment.<\/p>\n If struck down, that could open the door to overt partisan gerrymandering at both the state and local level.<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the legal battle over Florida\u2019s newly drawn Congressional maps takes shape, a Jacksonville City Councilmember is pushing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[832,112443,761,112444,116,112442,118,117,34427,3474],"class_list":["post-259833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-city-council","tag-council-districts","tag-free-action-news-jax","tag-gerrymandered-districts","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-city-councilmember-rory-diamond","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jerry-holland","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}