Opinion ID: 2815835
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the “intent” standard

Text: Article III, section 20, of the Florida Constitution, prohibits an apportionment plan or individual district from being “drawn” with the “intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” Art. III, § 20(a), Fla. Const. All parties in the litigation, the trial court stated, “agreed that it is the Legislature’s intent”—not the intent of, for instance, one rogue “staff member charged with actually drawing the map,” or of political consultants with no influence on the Legislature—“that is at issue.” But how to determine the Legislature’s intent in this unique context, where the Florida Constitution contains an explicit prohibition on certain improper legislative intent in “draw[ing]” the redistricting plan, is a much more difficult proposition. In Apportionment I, 83 So. 3d at 617, this Court explained that “the Florida Constitution prohibits drawing a plan or district with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent.” (Emphasis supplied.) There is, this Court held, - 43 - “no acceptable level of improper intent.” Id. The “intent” standard “applies to both the apportionment plan as a whole and to each district individually.” Id. (emphasis supplied). This Court’s precedent discussing the “intent” standard in the course of prior cases during this litigation has demonstrated this principle—that improper intent, particularly if “part of a broader process to develop portions of the map,” may “directly relate to whether the plan as a whole or any specific districts were drawn with unconstitutional intent.” Apportionment IV, 132 So. 3d at 150 (emphasis supplied). In a traditional lawsuit involving a challenge to a statutory enactment, courts determine legislative intent through statutory construction, looking to the actual language used and any other tools—such as the history of legislative changes and any appropriate interpretive canons—to assist in discerning the Legislature’s intent in enacting the law. See, e.g., Heart of Adoptions, Inc. v. J.A., 963 So. 2d 189, 198-99 (Fla. 2007) (setting forth the general principle of statutory interpretation that “legislative intent is determined primarily from the statute’s text” and applying rules of statutory construction “to determine the legislative intent behind the provision,” including reading related statutory provisions together to achieve a consistent whole and avoiding readings that would render part of a statute meaningless). As this Court has previously explained, however, determining whether the Legislature acted with the type of improper “intent” that is prohibited - 44 - by the “specific constitutional mandate of article III, section 20(a), is entirely different than a traditional lawsuit that seeks to determine legislative intent through statutory construction.” Apportionment IV, 132 So. 3d at 150. Specifically, this Court held in largely rejecting claims of legislative privilege in Apportionment IV that, because the decision-making process itself is the case, “the communications of individual legislators or legislative staff members, if part of a broader process to develop portions of the map, could directly relate to whether the plan as a whole or any specific districts were drawn with unconstitutional intent.” Id. This Court further stated that the “existence of a separate process to draw the maps with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent is precisely what the Florida Constitution now prohibits,” and that evidence of this separate process would “clearly” be “important” to help support a “claim that the Legislature thwarted the constitutional mandate.” Id. at 149. Following this Court’s precedent, which “emphasize[s] that this case is wholly unlike the traditional lawsuit challenging a statutory enactment,” id. at 151, the trial court framed the “intent” inquiry as determining “the motive in drawing” the districts. We agree that this was the correct approach. Under this framework, the trial court appropriately concluded that “the actions and statements of - 45 - legislators and staff, especially those directly involved in the map drawing process[,] would be relevant on the issue of intent.” Case law supports the trial court’s conclusion, which is consistent with our decision in Apportionment IV, that the intent of individual legislators and legislative staff members involved in the drawing of the redistricting plan is relevant in evaluating legislative intent. The United States Supreme Court, for example, has recognized that the actions of individual legislators and staff members may be relevant in discerning legislative intent in the context of redistricting. In Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234, 254 (2001), the Supreme Court reviewed “direct” evidence, relied on by a federal district court evaluating a claim of racial predominance in North Carolina’s congressional redistricting plan, involving an e-mail sent from “a legislative staff member responsible for drafting districting plans” to two state senators. The Supreme Court noted that the e-mail’s “reference to race” offered “some support” for the district court’s conclusion that the North Carolina Legislature used race as the “predominant factor” in drawing the boundaries of a particular district. Id.; see also Vill. of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 267 (1977) (stating that the “specific sequence of events leading up to the challenged decision also may shed some light on the decisionmaker’s purposes” and that “[d]epartures from the normal - 46 - procedural sequence also might afford evidence that improper purposes are playing a role”). Other redistricting cases have confirmed this principle. In Texas v. United States, 887 F. Supp. 2d 133, 165 (D.D.C. 2012),9 cited by the trial court, a threejudge federal district court panel stated that its “skepticism about the legislative process that created [a challenged district] [wa]s further fueled by an email sent between staff members on the eve of the Senate Redistricting Committee’s markup of the proposed map.” See also Smith v. Beasley, 946 F. Supp. 1174, 1210 (D.S.C. 1996) (stating that “the evidence [wa]s clear that the Reapportionment Subcommittee delegated to its staff . . . the responsibility of drawing the district lines,” and subsequently evaluating the actions of those staff members). In other words, the federal district court looked to the actions of legislative staff members directly involved in the redistricting process to assist in evaluating whether the Legislature was acting with improper intent. Whether the actions of individual legislators or staffers ultimately signify constitutionally improper intent—as the trial court concluded in this case, despite finding the professional staff to be 9. The federal district court’s opinion in Texas was subsequently vacated on other grounds by the United States Supreme Court after that Court issued its recent decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013), holding a portion of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. See Texas v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2885 (2013). - 47 - credible—is a separate question from whether their intent is relevant, in the first place, to evaluating the intent of the Legislature in drawing the redistricting plan. In support of its contrary argument that “[c]ourts across the country . . . refuse to impute the personal motivations of individual legislators to the legislative body as a collective whole,” the Legislature offers a catalogue of citations to cases from other jurisdictions. But, as the challengers have pointed out, these cases and the arguments made by the Legislature in this case closely mirror the exact cases and arguments this Court distinguished and rejected for the same basic principle in Apportionment IV. In that case, this Court specifically stated that “this case is completely distinguishable from the various circuit court orders and cases outside the reapportionment context from other jurisdictions cited by the Legislature that have quashed subpoenas of legislators or legislative staff members where the testimony of an individual member of the Legislature was not directly relevant to any issue in the case.” Apportionment IV, 132 So. 3d at 150. Indeed, in Apportionment IV, we determined that the actions of the individual legislators and legislative staff members involved in the drawing of the redistricting plan were directly relevant to assessing whether the plan itself was drawn with improper intent. See id. at 137 (“[T]he issue presented to the Court is whether Florida state legislators and legislative staff members have an absolute privilege against testifying as to issues - 48 - directly relevant to whether the Legislature drew the 2012 congressional apportionment plan with unconstitutional partisan or discriminatory ‘intent.’ ”). Accordingly, we hold that the trial court correctly framed the “intent” inquiry and reject the Legislature’s assertion that the finding of unconstitutional intent could not be ascribed to the Legislature as a whole. Having reached the conclusion that the trial court did not err in evaluating the actions of legislators and legislative staff members in finding unconstitutional “intent,” as prohibited by article III, section 20, we turn next to the legal sufficiency of the trial court’s finding.