July, 09 2015, 01:30pm EDT
Common Cause, Allies, Win Major Victory Over Gerrymandering in Florida
State's Highest Court Orders Legislature to Draw New Congressional Boundaries
WASHINGTON
Florida's highest court has delivered a major victory to Common Cause and other opponents of gerrymandering, tossing out a set of congressional districts drawn to protect Republican lawmakers and ordering the state legislature to fashion new districts.
The state Supreme Court's ruling today means that Floridians will vote next year in new congressional districts. The justices said the Florida Legislature again violated the state constitution's ban on partisan gerrymandering when it adjusted Florida's congressional districts in 2014. Voters passed the Fair Districts Amendments by ballot initiative in 2010.
Common Cause, the League of Women Voters of Florida, and several Florida voters successfully sued the Florida Legislature last year on the grounds that the congressional maps legislators drew after the 2010 census violated state constitutional provisions prohibiting partisan gerrymandering. Plaintiffs appealed the trial judge's acceptance of nearly identical replacement districts. Today the court backed the plaintiffs, holding that the new districts also violate the Florida Constitution.
"This decision upholds the will of Florida voters who passed the Fair Districts Amendments to stop politicians from manipulating legislative districts for self-serving or partisan reasons," said Peter Butzin, chair of Common Cause Florida. "Stopping the Legislature from unfairly gerrymandering districts sets an important precedent establishing that politicians in Tallahassee cannot undermine democracy without consequences."
Trial testimony last year unearthed the use of a false name to submit a map nearly identical to one that had been drawn earlier by political consultants with close ties to legislators, along with evidence of secret strategy meetings between consultants and legislative staff. The trial court identified two districts as unconstitutional, including the 5th Congressional District, which snakes nearly 200 miles from Jacksonville to Orlando. This district captures and packs far flung African-American communities to limit those communities' influence on surrounding districts.
Plaintiffs have also begun litigation challenging the Legislature's drawing of State Senate districts.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
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Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
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"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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