Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been arguing that the state’s population has been growing so fast that redistricting cannot wait until the U.S. Census is taken in 2030. However, if this population growth necessitates a rush for congressional redistricting, why is the governor not trying to redistrict the state legislative districts or the state senate districts? It is true that the population is growing, and in fact the fastest growing congressional district in the nation is central Florida’s 9th CD which includes the southern suburbs of Orlando in Osceola County. In 20 years Osceola County has nearly doubled its population and nearly all the new residents are Hispanic, but under the new district map there is a 13% drop among Hispanics. The DeSantis map is not designed to reflect this “population growth,” but to marginalize it. On May 4 DeSantis signed into law his map which targets several districts in central Florida, the Tampa area, and south Florida.
In 2010 Florida voters overwhelmingly passed the Fair Districts Amendment to the state constitution which prohibits district maps to be drawn to “favor or disfavor” an incumbent or a particular political party. It also requires districts to be “compact” to reflect the local community, respecting city and county borders. Florida voters have consistently supported these standards.
There are many legal challenges to this new map. On May 5 Common Cause, the League of Women Voters Florida and the League of United Latin American Citizens filed a lawsuit in Florida’s Second Circuit Court in Leon County against the DeSantis map, and stated, “We hope the courts restore the rule of law and uphold the Florida Constitution’s explicit prohibition against partisan gerrymandering.” A second lawsuit was filed on May 4 by the prominent election lawyer Marc Elias, and argues, “The 2026 Plan was not compelled by any legal mandate or neutral justification … [and] no longer even attempts to comply with the Fair Districts Amendment’s protections…. The 2026 Plan is less compact and introduces more county and city splits than the 2022 Plan.” However, many observers see legal challenges in Florida as an uphill battle since many of the state judges have been appointed by DeSantis.