The city of Jacksonville wants a fast-track decision by Jan. 6 on whether the spring elections will use a map picked by a federal judge.
The city filed a motion on Tuesday to stay Howard's decision, arguing she erred by not giving a"presumption of good faith" to the city's remedial map. The city says its remedial map is constitutional and should be used in the upcoming spring election for City Council.
Howard determined in a Dec. 19 order the city failed on its second attempt to draw"a constitutionally appropriate map." She wrote that while the city's proposed map makes some changes in districts 7, 8, 9 and 10, those four districts collectively still have substantially the same number of Black voters in the remedial map compared to the map council approved back in March.
The city says its remedial map drew lines in a way that retained 88.63% of the population of districts 7, 8, 9 and 10 compared to the first map approved in March. The motion says the map proposed by the civil rights groups that Howard chose has a retention amount of 83.54% for those four districts. The motion says the 85% proportion of Black residents in that district shows"the disconnect" between what Howard's order"attempted to do and what it actually did ."
Howard said in her order that City Council's insistence on protecting incumbent City Council members previously elected in racially gerrymandered districts"all but guaranteed" the unconstitutional gerrymandering would continue in the remedial map. In the map selected by Howard, incumbent council members Brenda Priestly Jackson and Ju'Coby Pittman would face off in District 10. The city's motion says that if the goal was to"increase the number of Black voices on the city council, then the court-mandated map fails in that regard, too, because it now pits two Black, female incumbents against one another."
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