The Florida legislature on Wednesday approved a reconfigured congressional map likely to help Republicans win an additional four U.S. House seats in November’s midterm election, putting the Sunshine State at the middle of a nationwide redistricting brawl.
The GOP-led Florida House and Senate passed the new map hours after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 ruling tightening the use of the Voting Rights Act.
The high court decision paved the way for Florida to erase several minority-majority districts.
The four GOP-leaning seats serve as a counterpunch to a new gerrymandered map approved by voters last week in Virginia, which would likely give Democrats four additional House seats.
The two states are part of a nationwide fight to gerrymander congressional districts mid-decade before this year’s elections.
Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision loomed large over redistricting in Florida and several other states.
Florida’s new map was produced by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in anticipation of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision. The court determined the Voting Rights Act can’t be used to force states to add more minority districts to their maps unless there is clear evidence of racial discrimination.
Mr. DeSantis submitted the new map to the legislature on Monday, arguing Floridians have been deprived of adequate representation in Congress in part due to racial gerrymandering.
Mr. DeSantis said Florida’s representation in the U.S. House “has been distorted by considerations of race.”
The map also aims to correct racial gerrymandering, the governor said.
The newly drawn districts, he said, “are race neutral.”
The governor said the redrawn lines address mistakes made in the 2020 Census and the state’s significant population growth over the past decade.
The redistricting is centered on areas of the state that experienced the most significant population growth.
The new map reconfigures the 9th, 14th, 22nd and 25th Districts, all carried by former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The new boundaries will create four Republican-leaning districts.
Florida Democrats protested the new map, arguing it “sliced and diced” existing congressional districts and would deny minority and Democratic representation in Congress.
“It is illegal, it is a partisan gerrymander,” Rep. Michele K. Rayner, who represents St. Petersburg, said.
Sen. Darryl Ervin Rouson, a Democrat from the Tampa area, said the map redraw was politically motivated.
“Is it race-neutral to split up communities made up largely of minority voters in ways that geographically make no sense otherwise?” he said. “And coincidently split up predominantly black voters in ways that just happen to be politically advantageous to one partisan group?”
Currently, Florida’s 28 seats in the U.S. House are held by 20 Republicans and eight Democrats. The new configuration would likely lead to a 24-4 split in favor of the GOP.
“I am not persuaded, as a partisan Republican, that this map is necessarily beneficial to the Republican Party,” Senate President Don Gaetz said.
Some analysts said Florida Democrats could hold on to one or two of the seats and that, in a “blue wave” scenario, Democrats could pick up additional seats in Republican-leaning districts that were weakened in the map reconfiguration.
Florida’s new map was unveiled less than a week after Virginia voters narrowly approved a referendum to allow that state’s Democrat-run legislature to redo the district map.
Virginia’s redrawn lines would make the state the most gerrymandered in the country and would likely leave the state with just one Republican representative in the House. That map is facing five separate lawsuits.
