Florida Voters File Lawsuit Challenging GOP's 'Extreme' New House District Map
A group of Florida voters filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the state’s new congressional district map just hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law.
The lawsuit argues that the redrawn map violates Florida’s Fair Districts constitutional amendment, as it clearly favors the GOP. It alleges that DeSantis and other state Republicans drew it in secret, releasing it first to Fox News with the districts color-coded in red and blue to signify the political parties.
“It was not a redistricting proposal dressed up in the language of neutral principles. It was a partisan declaration, and it was presented as one,” the lawsuit says.
It goes on to say that the man who drew the map for DeSantis, Jason Poreda, admitted during a hearing that he used partisan data to draw the map, which directly violates the Florida Constitution.
“Both the map drawer and its proponents have thus effectively conceded that the 2026 Plan does not comply with the Florida Constitution. And consistent with that understanding, the 2026 Plan proceeds to carve up the state to advantage the Republican Party,” the lawsuit states.
It also says that, since the new map could allow Republicans to capture 24 of the state’s 28 districts, “the 2026 Plan takes the state’s partisan skew to an unprecedented extreme.”
“That means even if Republicans win 55% of the statewide vote, as they have in recent elections, Republicans are likely to win 86% of the state’s congressional seats,” the lawsuit says.
It’s abundantly clear that the new map violates the Fair Districts Amendment, which passed in 2010 with 63% of the vote.
The amendment states: “Congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Districts must be contiguous. Unless otherwise required, districts must be compact, as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries.”
The new map was clearly drawn to favor Republicans at the behest of President Donald Trump, who so fears losing the midterms that he’s encouraging the GOP to rig elections rather than try to persuade voters.
What’s more, the new map slices up cities with large Democratic populations in an effort to dilute Democrats’ voting power.
“In particular, the 2026 Plan splits the Democratic-leaning city of Tampa three ways into new CD 12, CD 15, and CD 14 such that no district contains a majority of Tampa’s population, then pairing Tampa residents with faraway, rural voters,” the lawsuit states.
Though the map is obviously illegal, it’s not clear that the Florida Supreme Court will care. Six of the seven justices were appointed by DeSantis, so they might allow the new map to be used despite its unconstitutionality.
But as the saying goes, you’ll never know if you don’t try. Thus, Democrats are suing.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
