City Council approves settlement agreement in redistricting lawsuit
At a May 9 meeting, the Jacksonville City Council voted 15-to-3 to approve a settlement to end the ongoing litigation regarding the redistricting of the city council and school board district map.
The three dissenting votes were from Council Members LeAnna Cumber, Brenda Priestly Jackson and Reggie Gaffney, Jr.
In May 2022, the Jacksonville branch of the NAACP, Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, Inc., Florida Rising Together, Inc. and the ACLU of Florida Northeast Chapter — along with 10 citizens — filed a lawsuit against the City of Jacksonville claiming the district map in use at the time was unconstitutional.
In a February article, The Resident reported on the remedial map to be implemented for the recent city council elections as well as the 2024 school board elections until, according to a December court order, “entry of a final judgement in this case.” This map — the P3 map — was one of three submitted by the plaintiffs.
With the approval of 2023-0281 at the May 9 meeting, the entry of a final judgement may be drawing nearer, though City of Jacksonville General Counsel Jason Teal explained to council members that the settlement agreement will still need to go before the judge for evaluation before a final judgement is issued.
At a Rules Committee meeting the week prior, Teal explained in greater detail what the settlement agreement includes, which, he said, was the adoption of the plaintiff’s P3 map until the next redistricting takes places following the 2030 census and an award of $100,000 to the plaintiffs for attorneys’ fees.
Council Member Nick Howland was among the council members expressing reluctant support for the settlement agreement at the Rules Committee meeting.
“I’m grudgingly going to support this settlement agreement,” he said. “I begrudgingly do it because…I support it because of the unforeseen cost that we’ll incur if we continue moving forward and because we’re about to elect a whole new city council with these maps.”
Before voting on the proposed settlement agreement at the May 9 city council meeting, Council Member Brenda Priestly Jackson also expressed her reluctant support.
“This is an agreement I will live with but I am not comfortable living with,” she said.
Priestly Jackson argued not only does new map fail to “address the issues alleged by the plaintiffs,” but it also pitted four sitting women council members against one another in the spring elections by drawing them into two districts.
“Further, the same new redistricting maps didn’t draw any male council members into the same council districts, thereby further marginalizing and othering the ladies on the city council and potentially significantly diminishing the female representation on the city council,” she said.
Northside Coalition of Jacksonville President Ben Frazier stated the settlement agreement was “a step in the right direction.”
“I think it was unfortunate that the city decided to cost taxpayers all of this money to fight the inevitable,” he said. “They in fact were hard-nosed, hard-boiled and hard-headed, and it ended up costing the taxpayers a lot of money. So now, it is time to move forward in what I refer to as the sunlight of a brand-new day. Let’s work closer together. That is what this is about. This is about collaboration between all the parties involved: the private sector, the public sector, the community. We simply have got to learn how to work better together. We must all learn how to collaborate. Why? Because none of us is as smart as all of us.”
Frazier said this provides Black voters the opportunity to “elect a preferred candidate of choice in District 7” in the May election. In District 7, he added, “if the candidate who is selected…will operate with the best of interest, cares and concerns of all the voters, then that will be just fine.”
“What we want there to be is fair representation so that our cares and interests — meaning the cares and interests of the underserved community, meaning District 7 — will in fact be addressed,” he said. “We want our best interests to be addressed, and quite frankly speaking, I don’t care who’s addressing it, whether they’re Black or white.”
There is currently no set date for when the court will render a final judgement in the case.
By Michele Leivas
Resident Community News
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