A Florida judge weighed arguments Friday over whether the state’s newly enacted U.S. House districts violate a state constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering, a key test in a broader Republican-led push to redraw congressional maps across the South before the November midterm elections.
The lawsuit, brought on behalf of voters and groups including Common Cause, asks the court to block the map approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature on April 29 and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The map could help Republicans gain four additional seats in Florida, where the party already holds 20 of 28 House districts. The judge did not indicate when he will rule.
“It shows that Democratic districts are being targeted for reconfiguration. And why? To favor Republicans and disfavor Democrats. That is unconstitutional,” attorney Chris Shenton, representing the challengers, said in court.
Shenton presented data showing that under the new map, 82% of voters in districts currently represented by Republicans remain in the same districts, compared with only 41% of voters in districts held by Democrats. The disparity, he argued, demonstrates an intent to dilute Democratic voting strength in violation of a 2010 state constitutional amendment known as the Fair Districts Amendment.
That amendment, approved by Florida voters, prohibits drawing U.S. House districts with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent, and it bars districts from diminishing the ability of racial or language minorities to elect candidates of their choice. However, attorneys for Florida’s executive officials argued that the partisan-gerrymandering provision cannot stand on its own.
Mohammad Jazil, representing the state’s executive branch, contended that the section of the amendment protecting racial minorities is now legally suspect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts. “It is intertwined, it is interlocked, it is interwoven,” Jazil said of the two provisions, arguing that if one element is invalid, the entire Fair Districts Amendment must be struck down.
DeSantis’s general counsel, David Axelman, had asserted in a memo to lawmakers before the map’s passage that the state’s constitutional provision on racial redistricting violates the U.S. Constitution, rendering the entire 2010 amendment void. DeSantis’s office said no racial data was used to prepare the map he submitted to the Legislature, and the new plan reshapes a southeastern district that his office acknowledged was originally drawn to help elect a Black representative under prior interpretations of federal law.
The Florida case is one piece of an aggressive mid-decade redistricting campaign launched after Trump urged Republican officials in several states to redraw congressional boundaries. Republicans believe they can pick up as many as 15 seats from new maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama. Democrats hope to gain six seats from maps in California and Utah, though a Democratic-favored plan in Virginia was struck down by the state Supreme Court last week, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to restore it on Friday.
In Tennessee, a new Republican-drawn map that carves up the majority-Black district of Memphis prompted Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen to announce Friday that he is ending his reelection bid. The map gives Republicans a shot at winning all nine of the state’s House seats. In South Carolina, the state House began debate Friday on a bill that would reshape U.S. House districts to try to help Republicans gain a seat and sweep all seven of the state’s congressional districts. The proposal, pushed by Trump, would also move the congressional primary from June to August.
“How did we get here? One man made the call. He didn’t call every state in this country. He didn’t make calls across the North,” state Rep. Justin Bamberg, a Democrat, said during the South Carolina debate. “Where’d he go? The place that since the beginning of this country, you go to take this country backwards. He went to the South.”
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who called the South Carolina special session, said it was “important for South Carolina to send as many Republicans to Washington as possible to try to prevent Democrats from taking control of the House and attempting to impeach Trump.”
Congressional districts are typically redrawn once a decade after the census, but Trump’s push for mid-decade changes has accelerated a redistricting battle that is testing state-level gerrymandering bans and federal voting-rights protections. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that federal courts have no authority to decide whether partisan gerrymandering goes too far, but it left the door open for state courts to adjudicate such claims under their own constitutions — the precise legal arena now playing out in Florida.