Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a new congressional map into effect that could set the stage for Republicans flipping four House seats in the Sunshine State in November.
The move came in the wake of a US Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act that freed up red states to gerrymander more aggressively and against the backdrop of a redistricting race across the country.
“Signed, Sealed, and Delivered,” DeSantis declared on X in a victory-lap post.
Republicans have 20 of the 28 House seats in Florida. The new map creates conditions that Republicans believe are favorable to turn the numbers into a 24 to 4 split for them.
Florida is now the fourth red state this cycle to engage in rare, mid-decade redistricting, following Texas, North Carolina and Missouri.
California approved a referendum last year to effectively neutralize Texas’ redistricting.
Republicans and Democrats had largely been seen as close to even in the redistricting wars — until a Virginia referendum last month.
The fresh Democrat-favored map in Virginia could set the stage for them to flip four seats there, but that map is subject to litigation and hasn’t yet taken effect.
DeSantis has argued that aggressive redistricting in Florida is warranted because the Biden administration played games with the Census and cheated the state of at least one more seat.
“This is something that we’ve been fighting for a number of years: the fact that we’ve had so much population growth and the districts are really not representative of where Florida is today versus four years ago,” DeSantis contended last week.
“We had justification.”
The new congressional map is almost certainly going to face stiff legal challenges.
Florida’s Fair Districts amendment bans the state from redistricting with “the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” DeSantis has claimed the amendment violates the US Constitution.
DeSantis’s team has taken steps to try to protect against legal arguments that it sought to illegally gerrymander the congressional map, such as keeping details of how it was crafted under wraps.
The governor has also pointed to the supreme court’s recent decision on the Voting Rights Act as justification for the redistricting.
The nation’s top court had shot down a lower court’s order for Louisiana to add a second majority-black district, concluding that such rulings can only be issued if there is clear evidence a state is engaging in racial discrimination in its apportionment process.
The ruling has paved the way for red states to start carving up black-majority districts in a bid to undermine Democrats.
