‘Brazen Partisan Power Grab’: Florida Supreme Court Defies State Constitution to Give GOP Another Redistricting Win

In defiance of state law and the will of voters, the Florida Supreme Court has handed Republicans another major win in the redistricting wars in time for this year’s midterms, approving a ruthlessly gerrymandered map that could hand another four US House seats to the GOP.Florida’s state constitution is unusually explicit in its ban on partisan gerrymandering; the Fair Districts Amendment (FDA) approved in 2010 by 63 of voters expressly states that maps may not be drawn “with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” The court has struck down previous attempts by Republicans to draw more favorable maps on these grounds as recently as 2015.But six of the seven justices that make up the current court have been appointed by Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. And when voting rights groups challenged a new map signed by the governor last month that is projected to give Republicans an advantage in 24 of the state’s 28 House districts, the right-wing court gave DeSantis what he wanted.By a 6-1 ruling, the court on Wednesday declined to rule on the merits of the case, denying opponents' request for an emergency injunction, with the majority arguing that, despite the rapidly approaching election, this was not enough of a reason to rule on it while it's still being reviewed by a lower court.The lone dissenter, Justice Jorge Labarga, who happens to be the only justice not appointed by DeSantis, argued that the case could be reviewed under the court's pass-through provision, which allows the court to expedite rulings on matters of great public importance.Surely, he said, the upcoming 2026 congressional elections affecting the representation of millions of Floridians meet that threshold.”With the state’s primaries set for August 18, this virtually guarantees that, despite its unconstitutionality, the map will be in place come November, as Republicans across the nation try to pack and crack enough Democratic strongholds to cling to control of the House in 2026.In a post to social media, Florida's Republican Attorney General, James Uthmeier, celebrated the order as a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL VICTORY.”The Florida Supreme Court has REJECTED the challenge to the state’s redistricting plan and new map. This assures that the recently enacted map will be in place for the 2026 election.— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) June 10, 2026Opponents of the map—including Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and the League of United Latin American Citizens—have said that the governor has made no effort to hide the overtly partisan nature of his redistricting push, which he carried out rapidly under an emergency session of the state legislature without public input.In their lawsuit last month, they pointed out that the governor himself provided a color-coded version of the map to Fox News to highlight projected GOP gains—although Republicans won just under 57 of votes in House elections across Florida in 2024, they’d be expected to control nearly 86 of seats under the new maps.Meanwhile, Jason Poreda, a senior DeSantis adviser who has described himself as the map's drawer has acknowledged that he used partisan data to draw the map in spite of the FDA.As is the case with many of the maps drawn to maximize GOP power, DeSantis' cracks up majority-minority districts, including one predominantly Black district in Palm Beach and Broward County, and splinters the Orlando-Kissimmee area's Latino community across four districts.And here is the new Florida congressional map in Dave's Redistricting: https://t.co/fTqDHjncwz pic.twitter.com/UTxflFazT0— The Redistrict Network (@RedistrictNet) June 10, 2026“The fact that this is a partisan gerrymander is as obvious as it is unconstitutional,” said Bradley Heard, deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented the plaintiffs last month. “And while this unnecessary map is egregious in how it advantages Republicans and disadvantages Democrats, the people who will suffer the most if it is allowed to stand are once again Black and Brown communities, whose voices are consistently silenced in these redistricting battles.Florida Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes, a DeSantis appointee who upheld the maps last month, declined to weigh in substantively on the question of whether the new map violated the FDA, but said it was more in line with the maps favored by the US Supreme Court in the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision, which struck at the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by effectively ending protections for districts drawn to give representation to nonwhite voters.While Hawkes also did not weigh in on Republican arguments that the entire FDA should be thrown out because of Callais, he said it was ultimately fine for the court to defer ruling on DeSantis' map because to the extent the court has to balance Florida’s FDA prohibition of improper partisan intent and the United States Constitution’s Equal Protection guarantees, it seems clear that the potential partisan intent is the lesser of the two evils.The Callais decision has given Republicans a decisive upper hand in the redistricting wars that were kicked off last year when President Donald Trump called on red states to enact unprecedented hyperpartisan gerrymanders in an effort to beat back an expected Democratic wave in 2026.An aggressive and explicitly racial gerrymander in Texas enacted without voter approval was upheld by the US Supreme Court last month, netting the GOP an expected five seats, and six other red states have redrawn maps to likely squeeze in one new Republican seat apiece.And while GOP gains have been somewhat offset by California voters' approval of an amendment to allow Democrats to draw their own hyperpartisan maps, the US Supreme Court's refusal to stop the Virginia state supreme court from striking down of a voter-approved Democratic gerrymander dealt a critical blow to efforts to even the score, and Democrats have vanishingly few opportunities to make up ground before the coming midterms.Florida Republicans blatantly violate their constitution and brutally gerrymander their map without a single vote = 100 legal.Virginians vote to change their constitution so they can temporarily offset right wing gerrymandering = 100 illegal.America is a banana republic. https://t.co/vTer29RSqQ— Micah Erfan (@micah_erfan) June 11, 2026Florida represents yet another notch in the win column for Republicans, but opponents say they will attempt to fight the gerrymander ahead of future elections.The Florida Supreme Court's failure to stop this brazen partisan power grab is not only an assault on democracy, but an abdication of its duty to the people of Florida, said Genesis Robinson, the executive director of the voting rights group Equal Ground. Courts are meant to serve as a check on government overreach and a safeguard against constitutional violations, but, once again, when Floridians needed that protection most, the court declined to intervene.The time to protect voters from irreparable harm is before another election takes place under this map, he added. And while we remain committed to ensuring that Florida's constitutional protections are fully upheld, Florida voters deserve fair maps, fair representation, and a democracy that works for everyone now.