Florida Courts and Politicians Ignored the People’s Message

Sixteen years ago, Florida voters sent a clear message to their political leaders, overwhelmingly voting in favor of state constitutional amendments that limited politicians’ ability to draw gerrymandered districts. But a Florida trial court last month undermined voters’ will, refusing to grant a preliminary injunction against a congressional map that was drawn as part of President Donald Trump’s partisan push for mid-decade redistricting. Last week, the Florida high court denied the plaintiffs’ emergency petition seeking to prevent use of the map as the litigation continues. This means the new map, which is intended to add up to four seats for Republicans, will stay in place for the midterms.

In 2010, after four years of work by a nonpartisan group of citizens organized under the name FairDistrictsFlorida.org, Floridians voted on an amendment to their constitution that created strict rules for drawing legislative and congressional districts: Districts could not be drawn with intent to favor an incumbent or a political party. Minority voting power could not be diminished. Districts had to be compact, equal in population, and follow local, recognizable boundaries.

These requirements, contained in two citizens’ initiatives known as the Fair Districts Amendments, passed with 63 percent of the vote.

Drafting the amendments in a way that maximized their chances of passage and maintained their legal effectiveness in eliminating gerrymandering was not simple — and I would know, because I was the campaign chairperson of FairDistrictsFlorida.org. Before finalizing the substance and language of the amendments, the nonpartisan drafting committee consulted a wide and diverse group of election experts and opinion leaders and incorporated their suggestions. For example, community leaders expressed concerns that voting power of racial minorities would be diminished if the amendments were passed. Language was crafted to address that concern. Care was taken to write ballot language that was clear and understandable.

Under Florida law, the Florida Supreme Court had to review the amendments to determine if they addressed more than one subject and whether they were ambiguous or misleading. The court cleared the amendments for the ballot. To get the initiatives on the ballot, we then gathered the signatures of over 1.6 million Florida voters in support of the proposed amendments, which were verified by supervisors of elections.

As campaign leaders, we knew it was crucial that this effort be nonpartisan and that great attention be paid to coalition development. Our corporate board, which provided strategic guidance, was made up of Republicans and Democrats. We were in constant contact with supporters and the media. Messaging was consistent and disciplined. This earned the amendments frequent and positive media coverage. Every major newspaper in the state editorialized numerous times in favor of the measures.

But from the start, these initiatives encountered vigorous opposition from legislators, other elected officials, and professional partisans in Tallahassee and Washington, DC.

Politicians opposed to the amendments used several unsuccessful strategies to attempt to prevent their passage. They tried to personally intimidate leaders of the movement. The legislature voted to place a “poison pill” amendment on the ballot which, if passed, would have nullified the new standards. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the legislature’s amendment was intentionally misleading and struck it from the ballot. Opponents of the ballot measures unsuccessfully went to court to try to have the amendments removed from the ballot. Finally, they put $4.3 million into an unsuccessful media campaign to try to stop passage of the amendments.

Voters approved the amendments on Election Day, and litigation to nullify them started almost immediately. At 2:30 a.m., only hours after the amendments passed — the Florida House of Representatives and two members of Congress filed suit in federal court to try to stop them from going into effect. This was the first of multiple lawsuits, spanning six years. The coalition of organizations supporting the amendments fought and won each case, fighting off four federal challenges and obtaining eight favorable decisions from the Florida Supreme Court.

After the 2010 census, the FairDistrictsFlorida coalition challenged the maps drawn by the legislature in 2012. The state court trial judge handling the challenge found that state legislative leaders “conspire[d]” with Republican operatives “to manipulate and influence the redistricting process,” secretly developing a scheme to thwart the will of the people and pass a congressional map that “made a mockery” of the new constitutional language. The state supreme court affirmed, ordering the map redrawn in accordance with the principles enshrined in the Fair Districts Amendments. These court-ordered maps were in place for the 2016 election. The result was an immediate shift towards fairness and balance in partisan representation in Congress and the Florida Senate.

When the legislature redrew districts after the 2020 census, it attempted to comply with the constitutional restrictions put upon it by the citizens of Florida. That did not sit well with some in the Tallahassee political establishment, including Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). As lawmakers were passing a compliant congressional map, the governor tweeted that it was “DOA” — dead on arrival — and vowed to veto it.

The governor insisted that the legislature instead pass a map drafted by his staff, which eliminated the only district in North Florida that had consistently elected a Black representative — in apparent violation of the amendment’s provision forbidding diminishment of minority ability to elect representatives of choice. The governor’s map was nonetheless upheld by the Florida Supreme Court, which had recently shifted sharply to the right with the appointment by DeSantis of five new justices.

Then, in the summer of 2025, Trump directed red states to redraw congressional lines to create additional Republican districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. DeSantis almost immediately announced that he expected the Florida legislature to follow that directive, and announced a special session at the end of April 2026 for that purpose — timing that all but guaranteed it would be impossible to complete a court challenge of the new map prior to candidate qualification deadlines in June.

When the special session started, it became clear that the legislature had nothing to do with creation of the map. The governor had ordered his staff to draw a map without regard for the constitutional restrictions against partisan favoritism or protection of racial and language minority voters that were contained in the Fair Districts Amendments. The governor provided lawmakers with the map 24 hours ahead of the session’s start. This resulted in a map that added four likely-Republican seats and redrew the state’s only remaining Black-majority congressional district to significantly reduce its percentage of Black voters.

Sixty-three percent of Floridians voted for the Fair Districts Amendments precisely to prevent what just happened: the passage of a gerrymandered map that favors the controlling party and dilutes Black political power. The vast majority of Floridians want fairly drawn districts, as required by the Florida Constitution. But the governor — for political reasons — decided to overrule the will of the people and disregard the constitution, and insisted the legislature do the same.

This should sound alarms for all Floridians about how far our government has deteriorated since 2010. Rather than ignoring the constitutional mandates surreptitiously as they did in 2012, this year the governor and legislature publicly announced they were ignoring them. And unlike in the litigation following the passage of the Fair Districts Amendments, Florida courts today appear unwilling to stand up to partisan actors. Where are the checks and balances? What constitutional protections will our government ignore next?

Ellen Freidin was the campaign chair of FairDistrictsFlorida.org.