Florida Judge Refuses to Temporarily Block New State Congressional Map

A Florida judge on Tuesday left in place the congressional map adopted in in the state earlier this month that is likely to give Republican candidates a sizable advantage in this year’s midterm elections. Multiple voting rights groups and Florida voters had asked the judge to issue a temporary injunction blocking the map while their claims, including that the map violates the state constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering, move forward.

That ban is encompassed in the state’s Fair Districts Amendment, which was approved in 2010 by the Florida public with 63 percent of the vote and forbids any congressional apportionment plan from being “drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.”

Despite the language of that amendment — and the map-drawer acknowledging partisan data was used in drawing the districts — the Florida legislature approved the new Congressional map. The mid-decade redraw was done at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and was provided to Fox News before it was presented to Florida lawmakers, with Florida’s 28 congressional districts shaded in red (24) and blue (4). The plaintiffs in Equal Ground Education Fund v. Byrd, one of three cases filed against the state to challenge the map, call it “one of the most extreme gerrymanders in American history.” (The cases are consolidated.)

The push to change Florida’s congressional map was part of the national redistricting frenzy that began last year at the urging of President Donald Trump and launched into overdrive with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month in Louisiana v. Callais, which narrowed significantly states’ ability to use race as a consideration in drawing congressional districts and made it more difficult to prove improper racial discrimination in drawing those lines.

The Florida defendants, including the Florida secretary of state and state lawmakers, argued that the plaintiffs had not sufficiently proven the map was drawn with partisan intent, and questioned whether the previously in-place map, from 2022, could be used because it was drawn considering race as a factor. Those defendants, as well as DeSantis in public comments, claim that the 2022 map likely violates the federal constitution’s equal protection requirements and would run afoul of the Callais holding.

Florida Judge Joshua Hawkes sided with the state defendants in his refusal to block the map, finding the plaintiffs had not shown they had a substantial likelihood of success as required to issue a preliminary injunction. “The intent of the map drawer is not as apparent as Plaintiffs argue,” the court found, "nor is the applicability of imputing [the map drawer’s] intent (if any) to the entire Legislature established on this record.”

Hawkes, a DeSantis appointee, questioned whether he could order the 2022 map to be used considering the governor and legislature had deemed the map unconstitutional. “To the extent the Court has to balance Florida’s [Fair Districts Amendment’s] prohibition of improper partisan intent and the United States Constitution’s Equal Protection guarantees, it seems clear that the potential partisan intent in the 2026 map is the lesser of the two evils,” Hawkes wrote. And should the 2026 map later be determined to violate the Fair Districts Amendment, he said — echoing statements defendants made in the injunction hearing — it isn’t unusual for maps later determined to be unconstitutional to be used in elections while litigation is ongoing.

The plaintiffs have appealed to the intermediate court, but the final decision on whether to block the map, and ultimately whether to enforce the Fair Districts Amendment, is likely to fall to the Florida Supreme Court. DeSantis appointed six of seven members of the current court; in recent years, the court has sided with him on restricting abortion rights — overturning precedent to do so — and allowed him to undermine prosecutorial independence.

Hawkes did not reach the state’s most aggressive and controversial argument regarding the partisan gerrymandering ban — that the entire Fair Districts Amendment should be nullified because parts of it may violate the U.S. Constitution. In addition to banning partisan gerrymandering, the amendment also prohibits diminishing the ability of racial or language minorities to elect representatives of their choice. The state contends that clause is unconstitutional under Callais, and further argues the full amendment is void because that portion of the amendment cannot be severed from the ban on partisan gerrymandering or the remainder of the amendment.

The passage of the map and the pending litigation are occurring as Florida election officials prepare to hold primary elections in August. As the state urged, Hawkes said that public interest weighs against issuing an injunction in deference to “stability before elections.” He cited the Purcell principle, which says that federal courts should not change election rules too close to an election, as a “a common-sense and sound principle.”

The plaintiffs argue that the public’s interest actually rests in voting under districts that do not violate the state’s ban on drawing congressional lines to favor political parties, and Florida citizens would not be harmed by maintaining the “status quo” — voting under a map used in 2022 and 2024 rather than one rushed through the legislature on the briefest of consideration months before an election . “The legislature has unclean hands to claim any injury for the timing of this redistricting because that timing is of their own making,” a plaintiffs’ attorney argued in the temporary injunction hearing, noting that election supervisors were instructed to maintain the ability to run elections under the 2022 map in case the court found in plaintiffs’ favor. 

While certainly state legislatures, governors, and Trump are partly responsible for the rampage of mid-decade redistricting, the fingerprints of the U.S. Supreme Court are also visible. When the high court refused in 2019 to ban partisan gerrymandering nationwide, it ensured that redistricting rules would differ state-to-state and that states could allow partisan goals to dominate the process of drawing congressional lines. And by issuing Callais so close to the midterm elections without restricting state action ahead of them, the Court effectively endorsed the current redistricting chaos.

Erin Geiger Smith is a writer and editor at the Brennan Center for Justice.