A group of civil rights organizations and Jacksonville residents want a federal judge to toss half of the redistricting map that City Council approved in March, contending the city used "racial gerrymandering" to pack Black residents into four districts in order to weaken their clout in three neighboring districts.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court says City Council "obsessed over race at every step of the process" and used "arbitrary racial targets" to guide the map-making in violation of federal law that such race-based considerations must be "narrowly tailored."

"The Constitution sets a high bar," the lawsuit says. "The enacted plan fails to clear it."

The federal lawsuit injects some uncertainty into whether the map approved by City Council will still be on the books when city elections roll around in spring 2023, or if candidates will run in drastically different districts north and west of the St. Johns River.

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The Jacksonville branch of the NAACP, the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, the ACLU of Florida Northeast Chapter, Florida Rising Together and 10 Jacksonville residents filed the lawsuit that was assigned to U.S. District Judge Brian Davis and Magistrate Judge Laura Lothman Lambert.

“Through these district maps, the Jacksonville City Council has attempted to strip us of our right to have our votes matter equally,” Isaiah Rumlin, president of the Jacksonville chapter of the NAACP, said in a statement “This represents an assault on one of our most fundamental rights since it determines how our communities will be treated by the city."

City General Counsel Jason Teal declined immediate comment on the lawsuit.

"We are aware of it but have not yet been served with a copy of it," he said.

The lawsuit does not put forward a proposed alternative map.

The suit argues the map approved by the city during its once-a-decade redistricting placed an excessively large number of Black residents into four northwest Jacksonville districts, leaving weakened political power for Black residents in neighboring districts.

"As a consequence, most of Jacksonville's Black voters are segregated into just four of 14 districts, depressing their influence over City Council elections elsewhere," the lawsuit says.

The groups asks for an order declaring seven of the council districts to be unconstitutional. The suit contends districts 7, 8, 9 and 10, which have elected Black council members for decades, are packed with too many Black voters, and neighboring districts 2, 10 and 14 are consequently "stripped" of Black voters.

"The Jacksonville City Council cannot deprive the people of fair representation by intentionally packing these districts and minimizing the voices of Black voters," said Nicholas Warren, a staff attorney for ACLU of Florida.

District 2, currently represented by Al Ferraro, covers a piece of the Northside and crosses the St. Johns River into East Arlington. District 10 on the Westside is represented by Randy White and District 14's council member is Randy DeFoor for an area covering Riverside, Ortega and part of Argyle Forest.

The lawsuit also challenges three of the seven School Board seats. Those are board districts 4, 5 and 6. City Council's drawing of council districts determines the School Board districts because each board seat is made of two City Council districts.

School Board seats 2, 4 and 6 are up for election this year. The redistricting approved by City Council was not done in time for the new lines to take effect for this year's School Board elections, so those races will have the same boundaries they have had for the past decade.

The biggest share of Black residents in Jacksonville is concentrated in Northwest Jacksonville, an area that in turn provides the bulk of votes for electing council members to districts 7, 8, 9 and 10.

The lawsuit says those districts are drawn to snake through Jacksonville neighborhoods to pick up Black voters in odd-shaped districts that results in one part of District 8 resembling an "arcade claw machine."

Maps produced by city staff during the redistricting process showed Black residents comprise the vast majority in the four districts: 59% in District 7 represented by Reggie Gaffney, 68% in District 8 represented by Ju'Coby Pittman, 57% in District 9 represented by Garrett Dennis, and 58% in District 10 represented by Brenda Priestly Jackson.

The federal lawsuit shows an even higher Black share of residents at 70% in District 8 and 62% in District 7.

The lawsuit says that in order to use race as the main factor in drawing boundaries, the city should have done a functional analysis determining the share of Black voting-age population needed for Black voters to have the ability to elect their preferred candidates.

The lawsuit says City Council instead "set racial targets based on uninformed guesses" of what might be needed to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

"The VRA does not protect the artificial packing of Black voters and the council cannot hide behind the VRA here," the lawsuit says.

University of Texas assistant professor Hannah Walker did an analysis of 14 citywide elections from 2014 to 2020 that determined the Black voting-age population would need to be 41% of all voters for Black voters to have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in citywide contests.

Her study did not do any analysis on voting in individual council districts, but the lawsuit says her findings suggest Black-preferred candidates would usually be elected in districts that have a smaller share of Black residents than the four "packed districts" in the city's map.

The map approved by City Council largely keeps intact the "status quo" balance of power among Republicans and Democrats in each of the districts. Republican hold nine of the district seats and all five at-large seats, while Democrats represent five council districts.

“In their efforts to dilute Black voting strength, the Jacksonville City Council has taken away our right to an equal say in how our city is run,” said Ben Frazier, president of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville. “We won’t stop fighting until we scrap these maps and secure fair districts that protect equal representation for all of the people.”

Attorneys for the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center and the Election Law Clinic at Harvard University are representing the civil rights groups and residents.

Duval County Democratic Party Chairman Daniel Henry praised the lawsuit, saying City Council produced "racially gerrymandered maps that dilute the voting power of African Americans and perpetuates another decade of disenfranchisement. Their actions, intended or not, cannot stand.”