Credit: Inside the MagicGovernor Ron DeSantis scored another legal victory over his re-districting policies in Florida in the wake of his settlement with Walt Disney World, hinting that the former presidential candidate might be back on a winning streak.
DeSantis is no stranger to controversial changes to state districts. For months, he was a co-defendant in a lawsuit brought by the Walt Disney World Resort after he dissolved the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special tax area around the iconic theme park. It was replaced with the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD), whose board of supervisors (handpicked by DeSantis himself) was also being sued by Disney until recently.
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The legal battle between Governor DeSantis and the Walt Disney Company raged through numerous different lawsuits and, at times, appeared to give both parties distinct advantages. Then, at the end of January, U.S. District Court Judge Allen Winsor ruled against the Mouse in the most notorious lawsuit, ruling that “Disney does not possess the legal standing to bring a lawsuit against the Governor or the Secretary. Furthermore, its allegations against the CFTOD Defendants lack merit, as ‘when a statute is facially constitutional, a plaintiff cannot bring a free-speech challenge by claiming that the lawmakers who passed it acted with a constitutionally impermissible purpose.’”
Disney immediately appealed the decision, but all of that became moot when the CFTOD abruptly announced that it had come to a settlement agreement with the company and all lawsuits would be dropped. Despite all its heated words, Disney agreed, saying (via Walt Disney World Resort Jeff Vahle), “This agreement opens a new chapter of constructive engagement with the new leadership of the district and serves the interests of all parties by enabling significant continued investment and the creation of thousands of direct and indirect jobs and economic opportunity in the state.”
Now, Governor DeSantis has achieved a new post-Disney victory, this time over a re-districting plan that social groups accused of racial discrimination and violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment. A lawsuit filed by Common Cause Florida and the Florida NAACP claimed that the GOP-controlled state legislature (via Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd) and DeSantis had crafted “the state’s current congressional map [to deny] Black voters their right to elect candidates of their choice.
This lawsuit has a notable similarity to Disney v. DeSantis, in that it is not typical for the chief executive of state to have such an active hand in re-structuring or dissolving districts, let alone to be doing so in a way that consistently opens them up to legal action.
Unfortunately for Common Cause Florida, a three-judge panel felt other and ruled that, although they could assume racial animus, the lawsuit had not sufficiently proven it. The decision read, in part, “It is not enough for the plaintiffs to show that the governor was motivated in part by racial animus, which we will assume without deciding for purposes of our decision. Rather, they also must prove that the Florida Legislature itself acted with some discriminatory purpose when adopting and passing the enacted map. This they have not done.”
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Common Cause Florida has responded, Tweeting, “While we carefully analyze the ruling in Common Cause Florida v Byrd to determine what it means for Floridians, we are disappointed in the court’s decision to deny Black voters their right to full representation.”
The Florida Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case on appeal but has not yet set a date. For now, Governor DeSantis can rack this up as one of his continuing legal victories, along with his (according to him) inevitable defeat of Disney.
Inside the Magic reached out to Governor DeSantis’ office for comment, but has not heard back by the time of publishing.
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The full decision can be read here: