MIAMI – A federal judge allowed an ongoing lawsuit challenging Miami’s electoral map to continue Friday, denying the city’s latest attempt to have the case thrown out of court.
In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore said the city made “serious misrepresentations” in an appeal — in which it would ultimately prevail — and cited a Local 10 News report in saying so.
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He had harsh words for the city and its legal arguments in the 28-page ruling.
It’s all part of an ongoing saga in which the plaintiffs, which include the NAACP, argued that city commissioners drew the map — in a process known as gerrymandering — in a racially-discriminatory and unconstitutional fashion.
In a legal back-and-forth, the city was ordered in May to redraw its “unconstitutional” original commission maps, which it did, only to have its new map, which largely kept the original districts intact, challenged once again.
After Moore ruled that those maps, too, were unconstitutional, and ordered commissioners to adopt a map drawn by the plaintiffs, the city would appeal and earn a temporary win, allowing it to use its own map in November’s commission election. But the legal tussle continued.
The city, in its attempt to dismiss the case, argued that there was no evidence that the maps were racially-gerrymandered and if they were, it was insignificant. It also argued, among other things, that the plaintiffs lacked standing in the case.
Read the city’s claims:
Moore, however, did not mince words in rejecting those arguments Friday, after saying the city’s arguments were “largely identical” to those already considered and rejected by the court.
“Like a broken record, (the city) once more raises the same unavailing arguments,” Moore wrote. “Once more, the Court rejects them.”
Read the ruling:
He also said the city misrepresented facts in an ultimately-successful appeal for a stay to have its new map remain in place for the November elections.
Moore wrote that the city’s July 31 claim to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that adopting the plaintiff’s redrawn map, rather than the city’s redrawn map, would force Miami-Dade elections officials “to start from scratch” in implementing a new map in time for the November election, “adding further confusion and delay” ahead of an Aug. 1 deadline.
The appeals court sided with the city and issued — and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld — a stay keeping its map in place based, in part, based on that argument, Moore said.
But Moore cited a statement made by a Miami-Dade elections official to Local 10 News indicating elections staffers had already began preparing to use either map, leading him to call the city’s “start from scratch” claim one of its “serious misrepresentations” to federal appeals judges.
He also wrote the city “misleading(ly)” stated the city claimed the Aug. 1 deadline “was suddenly too close to the November election...even though (the city) repeatedly acknowledged that date as one by which a remedial plan would need to be in place.”
Moore also rejected the city’s claims disputing the existence or seriousness of racial gerrymandering in its electoral map, saying its arguments “reflect(ed) a fundamental misunderstanding of racial gerrymandering claims.”
“If Miami’s citizens were racially gerrymandered, (the city) may not escape liability by insisting that its constitutional violation was not as bad as other, more blatant instances where voters have been segregated by race,” he wrote. “Any proven case of racial gerrymandering is unequivocally serious.”
A city spokesperson reacted to the ruling in a statement to Local 10 News on Friday:
“The district court denied the motion to dismiss. Unfortunately, the Court is required to accept the Plaintiffs’ allegations as true at this stage of the proceedings. Throughout the rest of the proceedings, the City will demonstrate with factual evidence, and not merely Plaintiffs’ allegations, that the redistricting plan complied with all applicable law.”
Legal analyst David Weinstein, who’s not involved in the case, said the city has filed a motion for summary judgement in the case in which both parties have until Nov. 27 to respond.
“In that motion, they again raised their arguments regarding lack of standing and lack of injury, both of which have been previously rejected by the District Court,” he said. “That motion states that from the (city)’s point of view, the undisputed facts do not establish racially based gerrymandering. Based on prior rulings, I expect that motion to be denied as well.”
With Moore’s ruling Friday, the case is still on track to go to trial at the end of January.