Miami racial gerrymandering case could lead to new city elections in all five districts

Monday marked the first day of a high-stakes trial to determine whether Miami drew an unconstitutional voting map with district boundaries that sorted city residents based on race and ethnicity — a case that could trigger special elections across Miami if the city loses.

The coalition of citizens and community groups accusing the city of racial gerrymandering want the judge to order special elections in each of the city’s five commission districts as early as November. Such an outcome — though far from a certainty — would cut short the terms of multiple sitting commissioners and force them to run for their current seats or to campaign in new districts under a drastically different voting map.

Depending on how the map is drawn, those elections could redefine Miami’s political establishment at a time when City Hall is dogged by multiple scandals, investigations and lawsuits.

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“Special elections would be warranted,” said Nicholas Warren, one of several attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union representing the plaintiffs. Miami-Dade County’s Elections Department would need a new citywide voting map by March 31 in order to “prepare seamlessly” for five simultaneous district elections, according to court filings.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore suggested it may be premature to start discussing what should happen if the city loses the case, though both sides questioned witnesses quickly enough that testimony could conclude by Tuesday afternoon. Both sides are expected to call expert witnesses Tuesday.

It’s unclear if a settlement is possible before the judge rules. On Thursday, commissioners unanimously voted to pursue a settlement, but the trial began Monday as scheduled. Attorneys for both sides declined to comment on any possible negotiations.

The city has already lost an earlier battle in the case, which has lasted more than a year. Last year, Moore tossed the map that commissioners approved during redistricting hearings in the spring of 2022, noting that commissioners were too fixated on hitting “racial quotas” in order to preserve a board that includes three Hispanic members, one Black member and one “Anglo” member in a seat that has previously been held by commissioners who are non-Hispanic.

Moore also rejected the city’s redrawn map in late July, though an appellate panel and the U.S. Supreme Court later sided with the city and allowed the map to be used for the 2023 municipal elections.

On Monday, the comments referencing a possible special election came near the end of a day that largely focused on establishing whether the plaintiffs had legal standing to sue the city, with each individual and representatives from advocacy groups being questioned about where they lived and whether their organizations had members residing in the city. The plaintiffs include Grove Rights and Community Equity (GRACE), two local branches of the NAACP and multiple individual residents.

Carolyn Donaldson, an executive member of the South Dade NAACP, recounted how the debate over redistricting began when neighbors protested a city plan to carve out parts of Coconut Grove.

“The splitting of the Grove had racial implications,” she said from the witness stand.

If the judge decides against ordering a November special election in the event the city loses, the community groups are proposing the city could hold elections for all five commission districts in November 2025, when Mayor Francis Suarez would reach the end of his term limits and voters across Miami would be back at the polls to elect a new mayor.

According to a pretrial filing, citywide special elections this year would cost $115,000. If all five races went to runoffs, the city would have to spend another $507,000 for the second round of voting. Separately, implementing a new voting map would cost the city $154,000.

In their written arguments, ACLU attorneys pointed to a racial gerrymandering case out of North Carolina that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2015, a group of voters sued the state, alleging it had racially gerrymandered 28 of its legislative districts, composed of mostly Black voters, when it redrew the district map years earlier. They argued the map violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. A district court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor.

In 2017, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed the lower court’s ruling that the districts violated the plaintiffs’ equal protection rights.

The Supreme Court, however, also vacated the district court’s order calling for a special election, redrawn maps and shortened terms for legislators in the gerrymandered districts. The Supreme Court said the lower court did not conduct a proper analysis.

In its decision, the Supreme Court suggested there should be a high bar for calling for a special election, adding that the district court’s reasoning “would appear to justify a special election in every racial-gerrymandering case — a result clearly at odds with our demand for careful case-specific analysis.”