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

Heading: legal sufficiency of unconstitutional intent

Text: Our review of the trial court’s finding of unconstitutional intent in the congressional redistricting plan takes place against the backdrop of the trial court’s specific finding that the Legislature “systematically deleted almost all of their e- mails and other documentation relating to redistricting.” The Legislature did so despite knowledge that litigation over the constitutionality of its redistricting plan was inevitable. In fact, as far back as 2008, the Legislature argued to this Court that “litigation challenging reapportionment under the new standards” would increase as a result of the Fair Districts Amendment. See Advisory Op. to Att’y Gen. re Standards for Establishing Legislative Dist. Boundaries, 2 So. 3d 161, 165 (Fla. - 49 - 2009). And, the Legislature informed the trial court in this case that litigation “was ‘imminent’ long before the days preceding the filing of” the challengers’ lawsuit. From “start to finish,” the Legislature asserted, the 2012 redistricting process, “more than any other, was conducted in an atmosphere charged with litigation.” To be sure, the Legislature did preserve some records related to redistricting—documents showing, for instance, the time and location of public meetings or other generally benign details of the process. But the Legislature saved virtually no communications among legislators and staff and none of the communications—which, as a result of this case, we now know to have occurred— involving the outside political consultants. The Legislature had no specific policy requiring it to preserve communications regarding redistricting, even though it knew litigation was certain to occur, and admits that its record-retention policies applied in the same manner to redistricting as they applied to all types of legislative business. The House’s policy, for example, specified that “records that are no longer needed for any purpose and that do not have sufficient administrative, legal, or fiscal significance to warrant their retention shall be disposed of systematically.” Fla. H.R. Rule 14.2(b) (2010-2012). To the extent the Legislature argues that it had no reason to know it needed to preserve these records because it could not have anticipated this Court’s - 50 - decision in Apportionment IV rejecting its broad claim of legislative privilege over communications related to redistricting, the Legislature had, according to testimony at trial, determined as early as January 2011 that no privilege would apply to any of its communications with outside political consultants. In other words, the Legislature clearly knew that communications between, for instance, Speaker Cannon and consultant Reichelderfer would not be privileged, that they would be sought in litigation, and that litigation was certain to occur. Yet, Speaker Cannon did not preserve these records—and the only reason we now know these communications occurred is because records were produced during the litigation by Reichelderfer. The same is true of non-public draft redistricting maps sent to Reichelderfer by legislative staffer Kirk Pepper, using a personal e-mail account and a since-deleted “Dropbox” account. The trial court stated that there was “no legal duty on the part of the Legislature to preserve these records, but you have to wonder why they didn’t,” given that litigation was certain to occur. Although the Legislature’s failure to preserve records apparently did not violate a specific rule of legislative procedure regarding records retention—even though at least some of these records likely did have sufficient legal significance to have warranted their retention—Florida courts have, in any event, found a duty to preserve evidence in other circumstances when a party should reasonably foresee litigation. See Am. Hospitality Mgmt. Co. of - 51 - Minn. v. Hettiger, 904 So. 2d 547, 549 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005) (noting holdings that “a defendant could be charged with a duty to preserve evidence where it could reasonably have foreseen the claim”). And this Court, in rejecting the Legislature’s broad claim of legislative privilege in Apportionment IV, clearly held that the “purpose behind the voters’ enactment of the article III, section 20(a), standards will be undermined” if “the Legislature alone is responsible for determining what aspects of the reapportionment process are shielded from discovery.” 132 So. 3d at 149. Even in the absence of a legal duty, though, the spoliation of evidence results in an adverse inference against the party that discarded or destroyed the evidence. As this Court explained in Martino v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 908 So. 2d 342, 346 (Fla. 2005), Florida courts may impose sanctions, including striking pleadings, against a party that intentionally lost, misplaced, or destroyed evidence, and a jury could infer under such circumstances that the evidence would have contained indications of liability. If the evidence was negligently destroyed, a rebuttable presumption of liability may arise. Id. at 347. In other words, as recognized by the Fourth District Court of Appeal, “an adverse inference may arise in any situation where potentially self-damaging evidence is in the possession of a party and that party either loses or destroys the evidence.” Golden Yachts, Inc. v. Hall, 920 So. 2d 777, 781 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (quoting Martino v. Wal-Mart - 52 - Stores, Inc., 835 So. 2d 1251, 1257 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003), approved, 908 So. 2d 342); see also Nationwide Lift Trucks, Inc. v. Smith, 832 So. 2d 824, 826 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002) (stating that “[c]ases in which evidence has been destroyed, either inadvertently or intentionally, are discovery violations” that may be subject to sanctions). The trial court was, therefore, justified in drawing an adverse inference against the Legislature in adjudicating the challengers’ claim of unconstitutional partisan intent. And we too must consider the Legislature’s “systematic[] delet[ion]” of redistricting records in evaluating whether the trial court’s finding is supported by competent, substantial evidence. Turning to the merits of the trial court’s finding, we have little trouble concluding that competent, substantial evidence of unconstitutional intent exists in the record. The Legislature asserts that the trial court did not find improper intent in the plan as a whole and, in particular, contends that there was no collaboration between partisan operatives and the Legislature in drawing the congressional redistricting plan. While acknowledging that partisan operatives “sought to influence the redistricting process,” the Legislature states that “at no time did the Legislature participate in their efforts.” If features from the operative-created maps made it into the enacted map, the Legislature says, it is simply because those features were obvious or the similarities “superficial,” and not because the - 53 - operatives’ “frenetic efforts to make themselves relevant” were successful. In other words, the Legislature argues that it “did not conspire with the operatives, despite the operatives’ efforts.” We reject the Legislature’s attempt to water down the trial court’s findings and the inferences the trial court drew from the circumstantial evidence presented by pointing to an alleged lack of connection between the “parallel” process and the Legislature. The trial court found that it was “convince[d]” by the “circumstantial evidence introduced at trial” that the political operatives “obtain[ed] the necessary cooperation and collaboration” from the Legislature to ensure that the “redistricting process and the resulting map” were “taint[ed]” with “improper partisan intent.” Indeed, the trial court specifically found that the operatives “were successful in their efforts to influence the redistricting process and the congressional plan under review.” Nevertheless, the Legislature asserts that any conclusion that the whole plan was motivated by partisan intent “assumes the complicity of professional staff,” which is an “assumption” it claims the trial court rejected. While the trial court did find the professional staff to be “credible” and not to have been “part of the conspiracy,” the trial court immediately dismissed the Legislature’s argument about the effect of the staff having been insulated from the improper intent—which it called the “most compelling evidence in support” of the Legislature’s defense— - 54 - by stating that the “political operatives managed to find other avenues, other ways to infiltrate and influence the Legislature, to obtain the necessary cooperation and collaboration” to “taint the redistricting process and the resulting map with improper partisan intent.” And while the trial court made no explicit credibility determinations regarding any of the legislators who testified, the trial court did specifically reject the innocuous explanations provided by former Speaker Cannon and his staffer, Pepper, for their communications with the political consultants. There is also no doubt that the trial court’s finding of unconstitutional intent pertained to the “process” of redistricting and the “enacted map” as a whole—to use the trial court’s own words—rather than solely to the two specifically invalidated districts as the Legislature contends. In finding “too much circumstantial evidence” to reach any conclusion other than that the “redistricting process” and the “resulting map” were “taint[ed]” by “improper partisan intent,” the trial court pointed specifically to the following evidence: the Legislature’s destruction of “almost all” e-mails and “other documentation relating to redistricting”; early meetings between legislative leaders and staff with political consultants regarding the “redistricting process”; and the “continued involvement” of political consultants in the “redistricting process.” None of this evidence relied on by the trial court was district-specific. The dissent’s contrary interpretation of - 55 - the trial court’s finding of unconstitutional intent renders meaningless the trial court’s extensive discussion of—and critical findings related to—this evidence. We also reject the Legislature’s suggestion that the trial court’s determination, in its order approving the remedial redistricting plan, that the Legislature had corrected the identified deficiencies in the map is dispositive in evaluating the scope of its finding of unconstitutional intent. Instead, as detailed in the next sections, the trial court’s decision to approve the Legislature’s remedial redistricting plan flowed from the legal errors made in its original judgment. Accordingly, for all these reasons, we affirm the trial court’s finding of unconstitutional intent. We turn next to the trial court’s two legal errors, which significantly affected its determination of the proper effect of its finding that the Legislature violated the Florida Constitution. IV. TRIAL COURT’S FIRST LEGAL ERROR: FAILING TO PROPERLY ANALYZE THE CHALLENGE TO THE PLAN “AS A WHOLE” The first legal error committed by the trial court was its determination that there was no distinction between a challenge to the redistricting plan “as a whole” and a challenge to individual districts. This error led to the trial court’s failure to give any independent legal significance to its finding of unconstitutional intent when examining the challenges to individual districts. Specifically, the evidence presented and considered by the trial court— evidence that actually led the trial court to find the existence of constitutionally - 56 - improper partisan intent—included evidence pertaining both to the plan “as a whole” and to “specific districts.” Indeed, the trial court explicitly noted this, stating that “[o]ne of [the challengers’] claims is that the entire redistricting process was infected by improper intent.” (Emphasis supplied.) Yet, despite its findings that partisan political consultants had “made a mockery” of the process and “managed to taint the redistricting process and the resulting map with improper partisan intent,” the trial court rejected the challengers’ distinction between their challenge to improper intent in the redistricting plan “as a whole”—a challenge, in effect, to the map that was produced from the process—and their challenge to “individual districts,” stating as follows: [The challengers] distinguish between their challenge to the redistricting plan as a whole, as being drawn with the intent generally to favor the Republican Party, and their challenge to several individual districts, as being specifically drawn with such intent. I find this to be a false dichotomy, a distinction without difference. The redistricting plan is the result of a single act of legislation. If one or more districts do not meet constitutional muster, then the entire act is unconstitutional. The districts are part of an integrated indivisible whole. So in that sense, if there is a problem with a part of the map, there is a problem with the entire plan. [FN 5] [FN 5] This is consistent with the approach taken by [this] Court in Apportionment I. The Court invalidated the entire Senate plan but gave specific instructions as to which districts required corrective action. Id. at 684-686. That does not mean, however, that portions of the map not affected by those individual districts found to be improperly drawn would need to be changed in a redrawn map, even if a general intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbents was proven. What - 57 - would be the point if the other districts are otherwise in compliance? Such a remedy would go far beyond correcting the effect of such noncompliance, but rather would require a useless act that would encourage continued litigation. Therefore, I have focused on those portions of the map that I find are in need of corrective action in order to bring the entire plan into compliance with the constitution. (Emphasis supplied.) The dissent asserts that “[a]t no point does the trial court indicate that it would permit some level of unconstitutional intent in the drawing of any district.” Dissenting op. at 114. But the trial court specifically concluded that districts could be “in compliance” with the constitutional standards “even if a general intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbents was proven.” This statement clearly indicates that the trial court considered a general improper intent to lack any independent legal significance unless it was accompanied by another constitutional violation, which is an interpretation that simply does not square with the Florida Constitution or this Court’s precedent. This Court has held that “the Florida Constitution prohibits drawing a plan” with improper intent. Apportionment I, 83 So. 3d at 617. This Court has also held that “there is no acceptable level of improper intent.” Id. And, this Court has held that the “intent” standard “applies to . . . the apportionment plan as a whole.” Id. Accordingly, under these holdings, the trial court’s “general” finding of improper intent in the “process” must have some independent legal significance. - 58 - The trial court, however, failed to give effect to that finding of improper intent, in part because it never separately considered the challenge to the plan as a whole and, critically, never gave any weight to the general improper intent in analyzing the individual district challenges. The challengers correctly note that the trial court’s finding of improper intent was based extensively on the existence of a “different, separate process that was undertaken contrary to the [Legislature’s public] transparent [redistricting] effort in an attempt to favor a political party or an incumbent.” Apportionment IV, 132 So. 3d at 149. And, as this Court stated in Apportionment IV, the existence of such a “parallel” process is “important evidence in support of the claim that the Legislature thwarted the constitutional mandate.” Id. In error, the trial court gave no legal weight to the existence of this separate process. The trial court’s decision to invalidate District 5 was supported by numerous factors distinct from the “parallel” process, including that the district as enacted was “not compact,” was “bizarrely shaped,” and did not “follow traditional political boundaries as it winds from Jacksonville to Orlando,” narrowing at one point to the width of a highway. The trial court found improper intent to benefit the Republican Party as to District 5 based on “the decision to increase the district to majority BVAP, which was accomplished in large part by creating [a] fingerlike appendage jutting into District 7.” Then, the trial court simply “buttressed” - 59 - this “inference” of improper intent, based on the existence of the “oddly shaped appendage[],” through “the evidence of improper intent in the redistricting process generally, and as specifically related to the drawing of District 5,” but did not independently rely on the “general” improper intent in any legally significant way. In other words, aside from referencing the increase in the BVAP of District 5 over 50% during a non-public meeting at the end of the redistricting process, the trial court’s decision to invalidate District 5 was based solely on blatant tier-two violations. While this Court had to resort to evaluating tier-two violations as a means to infer improper intent when considering the challenges to the Senate and House maps in Apportionment I, as we emphasized at that time, we were constrained because we had no factual record and no direct evidence of improper intent. Exactly the opposite was true in this case. The trial court’s decision to invalidate District 10 is analogous. Noting an “odd-shaped appendage which wraps under and around District 5, running between District 5 and 9,” the trial court stated that the challengers had “shown that the district could be drawn in a more compact fashion, avoiding this appendage.” The trial court’s conclusion that District 10 “was drawn to benefit the Republican Party and the incumbent” was “based in part on the inference that the Florida Supreme Court suggested [in Apportionment I] could be drawn from oddly shaped appendages that had no legal justification”—an “inference” that, as with District 5, - 60 - was simply “buttressed by the general evidence of improper intent” in the process and by objective indicators relied on by this Court in Apportionment I. In rejecting challenges to seven other individual districts, the trial court never referred to the “general evidence of improper intent” that it found to exist in the “process.” Rejecting the challenge to Districts 13 and 14, in the Tampa Bay area, the trial court stated that, “[u]nlike Districts 5 and 10, there are no flagrant tier-two deviations” from which the trial court could “infer” improper intent. “[U]nlike changes made to District 5 by the [legislative] leaders during conference committee”—the “evidence of partisan intent specifically related to District 5,” where the House agreed with the Senate’s request to push the BVAP over 50%— the trial court determined that it could not conclude, “on partisan effect alone,” that certain decisions were made in drawing Districts 13 and 14 “with the intent to benefit the Republican Party or the incumbent member of Congress.” Likewise rejecting the challenge to Districts 21 and 22, the trial court concluded that the challengers had “not met their burden of showing unnecessary deviation from tier-two requirements,” nor had they “shown that improper intent led to the adoption of Districts 21 and 22.” Similarly, with respect to Districts 25, 26, and 27, the trial court determined that the challengers had “not proved invalidity” because the “totality of the evidence” did not establish that the “configuration” of these districts “was based on unlawful partisan intent.” At no - 61 - point in addressing the validity of any of these districts—in which the trial court rejected the challengers’ contention that the districts were drawn with improper partisan intent—did the trial court address any effect of its findings regarding how the “process” had been “taint[ed]” with “improper partisan intent.” In determining that there was no distinction between a challenge to the “whole map” and a challenge to individual districts, the trial court relied on this Court’s prior decision to invalidate the entire state Senate plan in Apportionment I. Citing this Court’s decision as support, the trial court stated that this Court “invalidated the entire Senate plan but gave specific instructions as to which districts required corrective action.” The trial court was correct that this Court invalidated the whole Senate plan, to the extent that it determined the plan did “not pass constitutional muster” for the purposes of this Court’s article III, section 16, declaratory judgment review. Apportionment I, 83 So. 3d at 683. But, unlike here, this Court in Apportionment I did not find a general improper intent in the state Senate plan, aside from the district numbering system that was manipulated to favor incumbents. Nor could we have, based on the nature of the limited record before us. In Apportionment I, we expressed our conclusion regarding the Senate plan as follows: We have held that Senate Districts 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 29, 30, and 34 are constitutionally invalid. The Legislature should remedy the - 62 - constitutional problems with respect to these districts, redrawing these districts and any affected districts in accordance with the standards as defined by this Court, and should conduct the appropriate functional analysis to ensure compliance with the Florida minority voting protection provision as well as the tier-two standards of equal population, compactness, and utilization of existing political and geographical boundaries. As to the City of Lakeland, the Legislature should determine whether it is feasible to utilize the municipal boundaries of Lakeland after applying the standards as defined by this Court. In redrawing the apportionment plan, the Legislature is by no means required to adopt the Coalition’s alternative Senate plan. Finally, we have held that the numbering scheme of the Senate plan is invalid. Accordingly, the Legislature should renumber the districts in an incumbent-neutral manner. Id. at 686. In other words, this Court identified very specific deficiencies in the Senate plan—eight individual districts that were invalid, the failure to conduct a functional analysis, and the district numbering scheme. This Court did not conclude that the whole plan was unconstitutional because of improper intent in the whole plan, and this Court did not analyze—and could not have analyzed—the plan in that manner. Therefore, in relying on Apportionment I in this way, the trial court failed to give any actual effect to its finding in this case that the “whole plan” challenge had been proven through the direct and circumstantial evidence of improper partisan intent presented at trial. Accordingly, for all these reasons, we conclude that the trial court erred in failing to recognize any distinction between a challenge to the redistricting plan “as a whole” and a challenge to individual districts. This error significantly affected - 63 - the trial court’s determination of the proper scope and legal effect of its finding of unconstitutional intent, particularly with regard to its analysis of the challenges to individual districts, and ultimately contributed to its decision to approve a remedy that was effectively no different than the remedy if there had been no finding of unconstitutional intent.