You also realize that the people of New York put this issue on the ballot.
Yes, the people of New York i.e. Democrats, try to be fair. They passed this new process. Florida has no such lofty goals.
“Under a process passed by voters in 2014, New York's new district maps were supposed to have been drawn by an independent commission. But that body, made up of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, couldn't agree on one set of maps”
“In a handful of other states, (Florida) courts ruled that Republicans had gerrymandered maps but did not enforce those rulings, but in New York, the judges insisted the lines be redrawn this year“
“Cuomo had struck a corrupt bargain with Senate Republicans a decade ago to put in place a flawed redistricting process AND appointed the conservative judges who struck down the lines”
“The final map was drawn by a Carnegie Mellon postdoctoral fellow named Jonathan Cervas, who was appointed as a special master by the state’s Supreme Court. What Cervas produced was immediately viewed as disastrous for Democrats“
In 2019, the US Supreme Court allowed unfettered political gerrymandering without federal court oversight in Rucho v. Common Cause. The Rucho case ruled gerrymanders “nonjusticiable,” which means that as long as legislatures claim they drew their maps for purely political reasons, those maps cannot be challenged in federal court for constitutional violations (they can still be challenged in state court, but that doesn’t necessarily help under all state Constitutions). It set the stage for red states to aggressively redraw their maps, unconstitutional disenfranchisement of voters be damned.
“…the Florida legislature drew a redistricting map that largely preserved the pre-Census congressional districts, giving Republicans a slight but not overwhelming advantage in representation. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wouldn’t accept those legislative maps and ordered them redrawn. The DeSantis approved map “cracked” half of the state’s majority Black districts and split them up among overwhelmingly Republican districts. The new districts paid off, netting Republicans three additional seats in Congress on Tuesday night”
The DeSantis gerrymander was challenged in court—but it was state court because of the Rucho decision. Since conservatives control the Florida state supreme court, they handed DeSantis and the Republican party a victory in the redistricting case.
