The Florida Legislature adopted new congressional maps for the state on Wednesday nearly along party lines, sending them to Gov. Ron DeSantis to be signed into law.
The new maps would create Republican majorities in more than 85% of the state’s 28 congressional districts ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
The Central Florida seat representing Osceola County and South Orlando, held for nearly a decade by Democrat Darren Soto, would be among the four districts with a new majority for the GOP.
Once signed into law, the new maps are almost certain to be contested in lawsuits.
Wednesday’s vote came on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision on Louisiana v. Callais that dealt a major blow to voting protections for minorities in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Florida voters in 2010 adopted a set of constitutional amendments that banned partisan gerrymandering and reinforced the federal protections for racial minorities.
The new maps ignore both of those protections, on the assumption that both of those constitutional amendments will be ruled illegal.
House members voted 83-28 in favor of the new map on Wednesday morning. The final vote on the map in the Senate was much closer, at 21-17.
Rep. Rita Harris, a Democrat representing South Orlando, criticized the proposal for being opaque and for subverting amendments that enjoyed widespread support from voters. DeSantis debuted the new maps to Fox News just a day ahead of the special session.
“We were cut out of this process. As a member of this house, I was cut out of this process. They will be cut out of this process,” said Harris. “We know that Floridians expect and demand a fair process for redistricting because they voted on it. Our constituents voted on it overwhelmingly. Nothing in the governor's supposed justification for this map has any meaningful addressing.”
The 85% of seats that Republicans could be poised to hold after this year’s election is significantly higher than the party’s share of the vote in recent statewide elections. When DeSantis won reelection by historically large margins in 2022, he only got about 60% of the statewide vote.
