Residents sue to stop ‘gerrymandered’ Tampa Bay Senate districts

TALLAHASSEE — Five St. Petersburg and Tampa residents filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging two state Senate seats they say were drawn up to illegally pack Black residents into a single district.

Senate District 16, which includes southern St. Petersburg along with part of Hillsborough County across the bay, concentrates more than half of Tampa Bay’s Black residents into a single Senate seat, according to the lawsuit.

As a result, Senate District 18, which includes most of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, is “artificially stripped of Black residents, diminishing their influence and voice in elections there,” the complaint states.

District 16 is represented by Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-Tampa. District 18 is represented by Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-St. Petersburg.

“Black residents deserve equitable representation in the Florida Senate,” Jarvis El-Amin, a Tampa activist and one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We demand to have our voices heard and our votes fairly represented — not diminished, diluted, cracked, or packed.”

El-Amin and the other four residents are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law.

They sued Gov. Ron DeSantis’ secretary of state, Cord Byrd, and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples. A spokesperson for Byrd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a memo to senators, Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, wrote that the map was approved unanimously and that the plaintiffs voiced no opposition when it was reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court.

Baxley, who is acting president, also condemned the timing of the lawsuit, days after Passidomo’s husband died after a fall. The lawsuit does not seek immediate relief, meaning it won’t affect the current election cycle.

“It goes without saying that the Senate will vigorously defend the unanimously approved work product of this body,” Baxley wrote.

Legislative district maps have, since the 1990s, included a seat linking southern St. Petersburg with the western part of Hillsborough County. The goal was to ensure that the local Black population has voting power in the Senate.

State lawmakers maintained that link when they redrew state legislative seats during the once-in-a-decade redistricting in 2022. But it came over the objections of some of the area’s Black residents, who argued the communities have distinct histories, organizing dynamics and priorities.

Maintaining Black voters’ ability to choose a representative of their choice is “a laudable and constitutional goal,” the lawsuit states.

But the Senate’s map-makers elevated race above all other considerations in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the plaintiffs allege.

The districts have “tell-tale” signs of racial gerrymandering while deviating from other redistricting criteria: “traversing large bodies of water like Tampa Bay, splitting political subdivisions like Pinellas County and St. Petersburg, and forming noncompact shapes,” the lawsuit states.

The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Kéto Nord Hodges, a board member of Metropolitan Ministries; Jacqueline Azis, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida; Jennifer Garcia, who works for the advocacy group Common Cause; and pastor Meiko Seymour.

The lawsuit is the latest challenge to maps redrawn by the Legislature. Voting rights groups have challenged a congressional map pushed by DeSantis that overhauled a North Florida district seat held by Rep. Al Lawson, who is Black.

Last month, a federal three-judge panel rejected the arguments, ruling that they didn’t prove the Legislature acted with “racially discriminatory purpose.” A separate challenge heard by the Florida Supreme Court is pending.

Correction: Due to a reporter’s error, a previous version of this story incorrectly stated the type of map proposed by Sen. Darryl Rouson and incorrectly stated the type of federal judges who ruled last month.