Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed into law a new congressional map that will favor Republicans in this year’s midterms and future election cycles.
The signing was met with a lawsuit asking a judge to block the new map.
Florida Republicans approved the new boundaries, which DeSantis’s office drew, in a legislative special session last week. It ignores state constitutional protections against partisan gerrymandering, assuming that they will be invalidated in the wake of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Twenty-four of Florida’s 28 seats in the U.S. House will favor the GOP under the new map, four more than under the previous map.
A nationwide fight
The signing is the latest development in the nationwide fight over mid-decade redistricting ahead of the midterms, which will decide which party will control Congress’s lower chamber in the second half of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Last year, expecting House losses in the midterm, Trump asked Texas to redraw its congressional map to favor Republicans. Historically, the party in the White House loses House seats in the midterms. In the past 88 years, just twice has the incumbent party avoided those midterm losses.
The Texas redistricting set off a blitz to redraw congressional maps across the country in both red states and blue.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that eroded voting protections for minority communities has renewed interest in redistricting across the country.
DeSantis did not hold a public signing ceremony for the new map on Monday. He announced it in an image posted to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, captioned “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” above the new map.
The redrawn districts include District 9 in Central Florida, which still includes Osceola County and parts of south Orlando. Democratic U.S. Rep. Darren Soto has confirmed that he is still planning to run for the seat, but he’ll face headwinds as he tries to hold onto it.
A new complaint
Hours after DeSantis signed the new map, a community group filed suit in Florida’s Second Circuit Court in Tallahassee. The lawsuit argues the new map violates the state constitution.
In a 71-page complaint, a coalition of voters and the Equal Ground Education Fund, an organizing group, is asking a court to block the implementation of the new voting map.
Among the many objections it raises, the complaint rejects the governor’s reason for ignoring the Fair Districts Amendments, which Florida voters adopted by a wide margin in 2010.
“That conclusion is not only legally baseless; it is transparently convenient, as it would free the Legislature to engage in precisely the kind of partisan gamesmanship that Florida voters amended their Constitution to prohibit.”
The complaint specifically names the changes to Soto’s District 9 seat as unconstitutional.
