FL: Duval School Board seats won't get special elections, judge rules in gerrymandering lawsuit
Duval County School Board members won’t have a special election this year to fill two seats that plaintiffs in a redistricting lawsuit argued were racially gerrymandered, a judge has decided.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard said the election requested by residents and organizations including the Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP wouldn’t be justified by a settlement reached last year to resolve the lawsuit filed in 2022.
“Regardless of the merit of plaintiffs’ desire for a special election, the request for such relief in this action at this stage of the proceedings is improper,” Howard wrote in a ruling signed Friday.
The 2022 lawsuit challenged the results of a redistricting effort Jacksonville’s City Council was required to do to account for population changes measured in the federal government’s 2020 censu
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2024/03/04/no-special-elections-for-duval-school-board-says-redistricting-judge/72837286007/