A federal judge has struck down Miami’s current city commission maps, ruling that the city “unconstitutionally” drew district lines based on race.
Gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the goal of creating an undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class.
Miami’s city council is known as the Miami City Commission. Five city commissioners are elected from single-member districts where they live.
Judge Moore said in his ruling that the commission believed its redistricting strategy would ensure the racial diversity of its members for years to come.
“In other words, the Commission racially gerrymandered each district in both the 2022 Plan and 2023 Plan, not necessarily out of malice but as a means to provide multiracial representation for the City of Miami,” Judge Moore said.
Judge Moore also ruled city commissioners unconstitutionally drew district lines in both 2022 and 2023 and prohibited the city “from calling, conducting, supervising, or certifying any elections under the unconstitutional districts.”
“Accepting Defendant’s argument would require minimizing the harm that each Miamian suffered when the Commission classified them on the basis of race. This, the Court will not do,” Judge Moore said.
“Indeed, the Supreme Court has made clear, time and time again, that the harms arising out of racial gerrymandering are unequivocally serious.”
According to a ruling in a 1995 Supreme Court Case, Miller v. Johnson, the court ruled that: “When the State assigns voters on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that voters of a particular race, because of their race, think alike, share the same political interests and will prefer the same candidates at the polls.”
“Therefore, whether the City believed the pursuit of diversity in representation could justify racial gerrymandering is immaterial. The harm stems not from the City’s objective, but rather, from the City’s racial classification of every Miamian in pursuit of that goal,” Judge Moore said.
“By sorting its citizens based on race, the City reduced Miamians to no more than their racial backgrounds, thereby denying them the equal protection of the laws that the Fourteenth Amendment promises.”
As part of his ruling, Judge Moore awarded the plaintiffs $1 each. However, he chose not to rule on the request for special elections. Instead, he opted to “set a status conference to discuss potential remedies, including but not limited to the imposition of special elections or a remedial map.”
A City of Miami spokesperson said in a media statement that the city’s legal department has received and is currently reviewing Judge Moore’s order. It’s unclear whether an appeal will be lodged at this time.
