Citing 'constitutional harm,' lawyers seek special election for 2 Duval School Board seats
Civil rights attorneys who forced redistricting of Jacksonville City Council and Duval County School Board seats are asking a judge to order special 2024 elections for two gerrymandered school districts.
If the request is granted, six of the School Board’s seven seats will be up for grabs next year during a presidential election cycle when turnout and partisan messaging are generally strongest. It's the latest fallout from a lawsuit Jacksonville's NAACP and other groups filed in May 2022 arguing the council had redistricted its lines illegally.
School Board districts are formed by merging together two council districts. A ruling that the council district lines were gerrymandered required changing the School Board bounderies too.
Voting for board seats is usually split between election cycles headlined by races for president and for governor, with candidates for odd-numbered school board districts decided during presidential cycles.
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But lawyers for groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Southern Poverty Law Center asked last week to also have elections next year in Districts 4 and 6, which wouldn’t normally happen until 2026.
Incumbents Darryl Willie in District 4 and Charlotte Joyce in District 6 could run in the redrawn districts. The decision wouldn’t affect District 2 member April Carney, who won office in the same election cycle but doesn’t represent an area impacted by the lawsuit.
The School Board’s current membership was set a few months before U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard concluded the district lines showed signs of “intentional race-based decision-making” in redistricting by the City Council.
The special election request argued the lawsuit’s plaintiffs “are suffering immense constitutional harm” being represented by officeholders picked by voters who were unfairly grouped together. Quoting earlier material from the lawsuit, they argue “the current School Board map ‘divides communities to prioritize race in the drawing of district lines’ thus ‘undermining the quality of representation for the people living in those communities and districts.’”
A city attorney told Howard this week she was working on a response to the elections motion but needed time, noting that Mayor Donna Deegan and Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland were just sworn into office Saturday, with staffs that were still evolving.
“At this time, counsel is unsure which staff members they may need to confer with during this transition, and who those specific employees might be,” Assistant General Counsel Mary Margaret Giannini wrote in a request to take until July 28 to file a reply. Giannini added that she needed time to talk through the subject with Willie and Joyce and to have expert witnesses evaluate a report the plaintiffs filed with their request.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Lawsuit could force new election for Duval County School Board seats
