TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed into law a new congressional map that could help Republicans pick up four more seats in the House — a move that swiftly drew a lawsuit.
DeSantis, who is scheduled to be in Los Angeles later in the day to speak at the Milken Institute Global Conference, announced in a social media post that he had approved the map. The post merely stated “signed, sealed and delivered,” along with a photo of Florida’s redrawn districts. He followed it with another brief post that said "promise made, promise kept." The Florida Senate confirmed DeSantis had signed the new map.
The new map was approved just days ago by the GOP-controlled Legislature and was put into place one week after the governor’s office delivered it to state legislators. Democrats have repeatedly called the map “illegal” and a power grab designed to help Republicans keep hold of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
The civil rights group Equal Ground Education Fund — along with a group of 19 Florida voters living in congressional districts across the state — asked a state judge to block the new map and reinstate the one that had been approved by the Legislature back in 2022. The lawsuit contends that the governor and Legislature violated voter-approved anti-gerrymandering standards. Those standards maintain that districts cannot be redrawn for partisan or to hurt or help incumbents.
'The 2026 plan is, by traditional measures of partisan gerrymandering, one of the most extreme gerrymanders in American history," the lawsuit states. "Statistics like this do not occur by accident. They are the product of deliberate choices, made by professionals with sophisticated tools and a clear partisan goal: to pack and crack Democratic voters with surgical precision and deprive Florida voters of a fair map guaranteed to them by the Florida Constitution."
The lawsuit relies on testimony during last week's special session as well as from statements from state Republicans talking about how they hoped to pick up seats.
Florida Republicans currently hold a 20-8 edge in the state thanks to a map muscled into law four years ago by DeSantis. The new map could boost that total to 24 due to redrawn districts affecting Democratic incumbent Reps. Kathy Castor, Jared Moskowitz, Darren Soto, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
These Democrats have said that they plan to run for reelection, although some are looking at running in different districts.
Moskowitz told POLITICO on Monday that, while he has not made a “final decision,” if he ran he would run in the 25th District, a coastal South Florida district that includes many Jewish voters and about half of his former district. It is a district that did swing to Trump in the 2024 election but is viewed by Republican consultants as a swing district now.
DeSantis has been calling for newly drawn congressional lines since last summer. He has listed several reasons, including the possibility of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that strictly limits the use of race in drawing congressional districts.
The governor's office has insisted the new map was drawn in a “race neutral” fashion, leading the governor’s office to reshape a South Florida district that had been held by Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick until she resigned earlier this month. But some Democrats dispute this contention by pointing to how central Florida Hispanic voters — many of them Puerto Rican — were split into several districts.
And a top aide for the GOP governor acknowledged last week that he relied on political data as part of his map drawing effort — a potential violation of “Fair Districts” standards..
Attorneys for DeSantis contended that these anti-gerrymandering standards no longer needed to be followed because the state Supreme Court last year ruled that the minority voter protections that were also part of the same amendment did not need to be strictly followed. They said the amendment was a “package” that could not be broken apart.
DeSantis and his Republican allies have also cited Florida's growth as a reason to redraw the lines, but the new map relies on the same 2020 U.S. Census data that was used in the current map, which has been approved by both state and federal courts.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries was among those who blasted the new map and said the "lame-duck Governor of Florida is auditioning for Donald Trump’s undying love after his presidential aspirations were crushed in 2024."
