Case Summary
LWVFL and partners filed a lawsuit in Florida state court challenging Florida’s new congressional map, enacted less than a week after the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. The map was drawn explicitly for partisan gain in direct violation of Florida’s 2010 Fair Districts Amendment, through which Florida voters enshrined protections against partisan and racial gerrymandering into the Florida Constitution.
When President Donald Trump kicked off a nationwide partisan "redistricting arms race" to help Republicans keep their House majority, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis responded by calling for the Florida legislature to redraw the state’s Congressional district map to favor Republicans as early as July 2025. In January 2026, he formally announced a special session of the legislature in April to consider redistricting. Governor DeSantis openly stated that the special session’s timing was to ensure redistricting would come after the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais. In 2010, Florida voters passed the Fair Districts Amendment to the Florida Constitution, which states, “[n]o district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.”
On April 28, 2026, the Florida legislature convened to take up redistricting. The legislature claimed redistricting was due to issues with the 2020 census or responding to recent Florida Supreme Court decisions (though the decision it invoked upheld the existing map). In fact, in 2022, the Florida legislature passed a 16-Republican, 12-Democratic district map that Governor DeSantis vetoed; the legislature then passed at his insistence a 20-8 Republican map that received widespread praise for helping the Republicans keep control of the House of Representatives in 2022.
Similarly, 2026 statements from Governor DeSantis and legislators made the partisan intent clear. Governor DeSantis tweeted that Florida should “go for BROKE in Florida” following Virginia’s move to redistrict, and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart warned that adding more than two Republican seats risked “a very large overreach, which I think is in the Democrats’ best interest.”
On April 27, 2026, the day before the special session started and before the 24-4 Republican maps were sent to the legislature, the maps appeared on Fox News with districts noted in red and blue, and Governor DeSantis’s Communications Director tweeted them out saying “GOP gains FOUR seats.” The man who drew the maps for Governor DeSantis testified that he used partisan data to draw the districts, and that he disregarded the Fair Districts Amendment.
The Florida legislature passed the map on April 29, the same day Louisiana v. Callais was decided, over an avalanche of testimony in opposition to the map’s partisan motivations, and Governor DeSantis signed it into law on May 4. That same day, the League of Women Voters of Florida, Common Cause, and the League of United Latin American Citizens filed a lawsuit in Florida state court claiming that the new maps violated the Fair Districts Amendment’s constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering, and requested the reinstatement of the 2022 Congressional map. Litigation is ongoing.
LWVFL was represented in this matter by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and Democracy Defenders Fund.
LWV Timeline
LWVFL, Common Cause, and LULAC file lawsuit
LWVFL, Common Cause, and LULAC file a lawsuit in state court, asserting Florida’s new congressional map violates the ban on partisan gerrymandering in the state constitution.
LWVFL and co-plaintiffs file preliminary injunction
LWVFL, Common Cause, and LULAC file for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to prevent the implementation of the congressional map for the 2026 election.
Court denies LWVFL’s motion for preliminary injunction
LWVFL, Common Cause, and LULAC file for a preliminary injunction, asking the court to prevent the implementation of the congressional map for the 2026 election.
LWVFL files appeal
LWVFL and its co-plaintiffs appeal the lower court’s rejection of the preliminary injunction and ask the state court of appeal to send the case directly to the state supreme court.