Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday hinted that he might be open to pushing back the start of Florida’s special session on redistricting, which is scheduled for next week. Even with that news, the governor says it will still move forward.
DeSantis ordered the special session in January, in anticipation of a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Though lawmakers haven’t published drafts of the new maps, at least one Central Florida district is likely to be a target.
Who cares?
The way maps are drawn can unite voters who share the same concerns and beliefs. Think about your area and the last time a person from a different party was actually elected to Congress. The way the maps are drawn have a big impact on this. They can functionally decide elections before a vote is cast, or make them fiercely competitive.
Congress is supposed to represent the interests of everyone in the country, because it has a say in pretty much everything that the federal government does, from the military to social security to immigration.
And whoever represents you, they often will be the most direct line between you and the federal government.
Why is a special session controversial?
Redistricting has historically only occurred every 10 years after the census, which is what the U.S. constitution requires.
At least at the federal level, nothing prevents states from redrawing maps before the next census — though some states do have rules about redrawing maps in between census counts.
But most states usually don’t pursue new mid-decade maps, because it can be time-consuming, expensive and confusing for voters.
Changing demographics, changing laws
When DeSantis announced the special session in January, he offered two explanations. But at press time, neither have any bearing on Florida's redistricting conversation.
DeSantis pointed to Florida's explosive population growth in the years since the 2020 Census was completed. With an influx of nearly 2 million people, or 8.9%, Florida saw the second-largest population growth of any state between the 2020 Census and the Census Bureau's 2025 estimates.
“Our population has changed so much in the last four or five years, we need to get apportioned properly," DeSantis said at a Steinhatchee event on Jan. 7. "People deserve equal representation.”
But DeSantis also has acknowledged that lawmakers must use the 2020 Census data when they draw their new maps.
The other factor he's pointed to is a pending U.S. Supreme Court case over the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law.
The high court is currently contemplating a decision on a Louisiana case that could overturn a key provision in the act, Section 2.
That section allows for districts where a majority of voters are members of minority groups, including Black and Hispanic Americans, to ensure that those voters get a chance to elect leaders who represent them and their interests after centuries with little or no representation.
Florida’s Fair Districting Amendments to the state constitution, ratified by voters in 2010, establishes a similar standard for state elections, building on Section 2’s scaffolding.
The amendments hold that “districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”
If Section 2 is overturned, those protections in Florida would also disappear.
DeSantis said he scheduled the special session for April, even though the Legislature was set to convene shortly, in expectation of the court ruling Section 2 unconstitutional or severely limiting its scope.
In his formal announcement, the governor said the purpose of the new maps will be to “comply” with that decision.
But Florida would not be required to draw a new map even if the court rules against Section 2, Rollins College political science professor Patrick Rickert explained in an email.
"The Supreme Court can't issue a ruling ordering the actions of one not party to a case, so they can't say that 'Florida must redistrict as a consequence of Louisiana v. Callais,'" Rickert wrote.
The court still has yet to issue a decision on the case, and there’s no guarantee that it will strike Section 2.
Republicans are moving ahead with the special session anyway. Rickert suggested that the new maps will intentionally ignore Section 2, on the assumption that the court will overturn it.
“Governor DeSantis's thought process is they can draw a map that would likely be found to violate Section 2 anticipating that Section 2 will be found unconstitutional, making their new map legal,” he wrote.
A national trend
DeSantis, a former presidential candidate and frequent champion of President Donald Trump's policy ambitions, has not suggested that the new maps would give Republicans more seats in Congress.
President Trump and GOP leaders for months have been pushing states to draw new maps to favor Republicans and potentially avert the midterm Congressional losses that have afflicted nearly every modern president’s party.
Other Florida Republicans on the national stage have described Florida’s redistricting session in terms of its benefit for the party.
“I don’t like this redistricting stuff,” Jacksonville-area Republican Rep. John Rutherford said, as reported by Politico. “But if they think they can get another two seats or something, have at it.”
In Florida, Republicans currently control 20 of Florida’s 28 congressional seats, or a little over 70% of the delegation in the House.
For comparison, in the last two biggest statewide elections, about 55% to 60% of Floridians backed the GOP candidate — Donald Trump in 2024 and Ron DeSantis in 2022.
Several Florida Republicans also said they’re worried that the new maps will flip too many blue seats, overextending the party’s advantage. Last month, Democrats flipped two deeply red state Legislature seats in Florida special elections.
“You could potentially do two [new GOP seats,]” said South Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, as reported by Punch Bowl News. “I think after that, you are really, really, really, really risking a very large overreach, which I think is in the Democrats’ best interest.”
Any new maps will need to be able to withstand any accusations of partisan gerrymandering. In 2010, Florida voters adopted the Fair District Amendments to the state constitution, which outlaw partisan gerrymandering.
The party rhetoric doesn’t seem to be helping that case for Republicans, Rickert said.
"It'll probably be a lot harder for the governor to make a claim that this is just about drawing fair districts, if everyone has already said this is about gaining more seats for Republicans,” he explained.
Central Florida in focus
Republicans haven't yet made their proposed maps public.
But there’s been a lot of talk about Florida’s 9th Congressional District, which includes all of Osceola County and Southern Orlando.
Democratic Rep. Darren Soto has held that seat for nine years, but in 2024, his Congressional race was the least safe among Florida Democrats.
Professor Rickert expects a scenario where Soto and Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost are forced to run against each other, with a tactic gerrymandering experts call "hijacking."
That approach relies on one basic requirement: Congressional candidates must live in the district they are running to represent.
By placing Soto and Frost in the same district, the two candidates would have to face off against one another in the primary, or resign.
Regardless of how things play out in the Legislature next week, one thing is almost certain: Any new map is probably going to be met with a lawsuit, Rickert said, forcing its proponents to argue that redrawing the maps a little over six months before the election won't confuse or disenfranchise voters, and that it wasn't done with partisan aims.
He also noted that a judge could pause the new districts until the 2028 elections to avoid confusing voters.
The special session is scheduled to begin on Monday at noon, but the governor has indicated that could change.
