MIAMI — A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Miami of creating racially segregated districts when officials redrew the boundaries of the city’s voting map in the spring, a controversial process that drew opposition from neighborhood groups over concerns that the plan weakened the political power of Black voters in Coconut Grove.
On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court accusing city commissioners of splitting the voting map along racial lines in order to make the five districts each have its own ethnic majority or plurality (three Hispanic, one Black, one non-Hispanic white).
Representing community groups and individual city residents, the ACLU contends that the city’s voting map is unconstitutional and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act by packing Black and Hispanic voters into certain districts and diluting those voters’ influence in adjacent districts.
