Second lawsuit filed against new Florida Congressional map

Florida’s new congressional map signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday has attracted its second legal challenge in as many days.

Equal Ground Education Fund, a voting rights group, and 18 Florida voters filed suit against the new map within hours of it becoming law. Three more groups – Common Cause, an ethics watchdog, the League of Women Voters of Florida, and the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Hispanic voting rights group – filed a separate suit Tuesday in Leon County Circuit Court.

As with the first lawsuit, the latest one claims DeSantis and the Legislature violated the state constitution’s ban on intentionally drawing districts to benefit a political party. The filing also asks for a temporary injunction to strike down the new map and order the previous districts to be used for the 2026 elections.

“The Challenged Plan is illegal,” the filing states. “It is a flagrant violation of the express will of the people of Florida, who amended their constitution just over 15 years ago to ban precisely the intent that is at the heart of the Plan.”

Florida voters approved two Fair Districts amendments in 2010, one for congressional districts and one for legislative districts, that prohibit drawing lines to favor or disfavor incumbents or political parties.

DeSantis’ general counsel, though, stated in a memo to lawmakers the Fair District amendment should be unenforceable, after a 2025 Florida Supreme Court ruling upholding the old congressional map struck down the part of the law preventing drawing lines to diminish the voting power of racial or language minorities.

The filing points to President Donald Trump’s push for GOP-led states to redraw U.S. House districts to benefit Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, and DeSantis’ decision to give the new map drawn by his aides to Fox News before submitting it to the Legislature.

The version given to Fox News showed a red-blue map of the partisan breakdown of the new districts, revealing their support for Trump or then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The new map could turn the current 20-8 advantage for Republicans in Florida’s U.S. House delegation to a 24-4 edge.

Those additional seats could be key for the GOP retain its hold on the U.S. House, where it has a 217-212 advantage over Democrats in the U.S. House. There is also one independent member and five vacant seats.

The lawsuit also points to several district lines throughout the  new map, arguing they belie the purported reasons DeSantis gave for redrawing the districts, such as the need to correct a racial gerrymander favoring Black voters in District 20, in light of the new U.S. Supreme Court ruling undercutting part of the Voting Rights Act.

Instead of reconfiguring only that district and surrounding districts as needed, the new map splits Democratic-heavy areas of Tampa and Orlando, while leaving Districts 27 and 28, GOP-held seats which the lawsuit claims were drawn to favor Hispanic voters, were mostly unchanged.

Jason Poreda, DeSantis’ aide who drew the new map, told lawmakers the changes to District 20 led to a “ripple-effect” throughout other parts of the state, due to the need to keep districts equal in population according to the 2020 U.S. Census figures.

“The Challenged Plan is optimized for Republican partisan performance, rather than calibrated to serve any of the pretextual motivations offered by the Governor or his team,” the lawsuit states. “In this case, the obvious answer is also the best one. The Challenged Plan is drawn with the intent to favor the Republican Party and Republican incumbents and disfavor the Democratic Party and Democratic incumbents.”