Redrawing the Rules: How Florida's 2026 Map Tests the Fair Districts Amendment

By Ana Gabriela Columa '27

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Florida's congressional redistricting will make the state look noticeably different in the upcoming 2026 November midterm elections. While the political stakes have drawn plenty of attention, many question whether these actions are permitted, and that legal inquiry matters more than the political one, as a state can survive an unpopular map far more easily than it can survive breaking its own rules for drawing one. Under the Florida Constitution, drawing a plan or district with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent is prohibited with no acceptable level of improper intent. (1) By its express terms, Florida's constitutional provision prohibits intent, not effect, and applies to both the apportionment plan as a whole and to each district individually. (2) That rule is more than a decade old, raising the question of whether this new map violates that provision.

The dialogue regarding redistricting goes back to 2015, when the Florida Supreme Court affirmed a trial court's finding that the state's 2012 congressional map had been "tainted" by unconstitutional intent to favor its then-controlling party and its incumbents. (3) The case had taken nearly four years to resolve, with the court ultimately ordering eight congressional districts redrawn under judicial supervision before the 2016 election. (4) The concerns raised by this ruling make one thing clear: which individuals or parties benefit was not of importance under this rule. The primary consideration is whether there exists the intent to benefit someone. Considering the rule has survived nearly four years of litigation and is still currently held, it should continue to hold now.

This new redistricting map raises the same constitutional concerns the 2012 map did, except this time the state isn't disputing the facts behind it. The map seems as if it is trying to argue its way out of the standard itself, using a severability theory that treats the Fair Districts Amendment's protections as a package deal Florida courts have never actually read that way. That distinction is the whole argument of this piece: Florida Legislatures aren’t claiming the 2026 map follows the previous standard; they’re claiming the rule that would say otherwise shouldn't apply anymore.

To understand the arrival of this argument, it's essential to look at the map that came before it. Attempts at redistricting started back in 2022, when the Florida Governor vetoed a Republican-approved map, increasing Republican Congressional representation from 16 to 20 seats. (5) The map was then signed into law, breaking up a majority-black district in the state. (6)

This new map drew two separate legal challenges. In Common Cause Florida v. Byrd (2022), voting rights advocates argued that the new map violated the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution by discriminating against voters based on their race, but in 2024, a three-judge panel unanimously rejected those claims. (7) Plaintiffs in Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute v. Byrd (2022) pursued a different tactic, arguing that the new map violated the Florida Constitution's Fair Districts Amendment. (8) They originally raised partisan-gerrymandering claims alongside the racial ones, but dropped the partisan claims in 2023, leaving only the question of whether the map diminished Black voters' ability to elect their preferred candidates in North Florida, and on July 17, 2025, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the map on that narrower question. (9) The partisan-intent standard that sank the 2012 map was never actually tested against the 2022 one. That gap is not a technicality, meaning Florida entered its 2026 redistricting cycle having never had to answer, in court, whether a map could favor a party the same way its 2012 map did.

Florida didn't wait long to test that gap. In April 2026, Governor DeSantis called a special legislative session to redraw the map again, four years into an eight-year decennial cycle. (10) The bill passed the House and Senate largely along party lines. (11) What makes this map different from 2012 isn't the outcome; it's that no one is disputing it. State Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka told colleagues on the floor that the map "does not align with Florida's constitution," but defended it as resting on a "viable legal theory" given Florida's "evolving legal landscape." (12)

DeSantis's own general counsel, David Axelman, went further in a memo to lawmakers, arguing that the Fair Districts Amendment's minority-protection language is itself unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, and that if that provision falls, the entire 2010 amendment, including the ban on partisan intent, falls with it. (13) Nothing in that argument disputes what the map does. It disputes whether the rule against doing it still counts. The state's own map drawer, Jason Parada, acknowledged under questioning that he used political performance data to build the plan, though he said he did not use racial data. None of this required circumstantial inference. The conclusion came from the people who drew the map, defending it on the record. (14)

Obstacles were quickly found through organizations and voting rights groups. Common Cause Florida and Equal Ground, for example, sued to block the map, arguing it violated the same partisan-gerrymandering ban at issue in Detzner. (15) On June 10, 2026, in a 6-1 decision, the Florida Supreme Court denied a request to halt the map's use for the 2026 elections, ruling that it lacked jurisdiction to intervene while the case worked through the lower courts. (16)

Attorneys for the state leaned on Axelman's severability argument in their filing, calling the new map "cause for celebration" and, in their words, "perhaps for the first time in Florida's history, the State has a truly colorblind map." (17) This kind of rhetoric wasn't happening without outside influence. Weeks earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had handed down Louisiana v. Callais (2026), striking down Louisiana's own majority-minority district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and narrowing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a ruling built on the same "colorblind Constitution" logic Louisiana had urged the Court to adopt, drawing directly on Students for Fair Admissions. (18)

Callais addressed the VRA and the Fourteenth Amendment, not a state constitution's ban on partisan intent, so it doesn't touch Florida's actual legal standard, but it gave Axelman's severability theory something it didn't have before: a live, decided precedent striking down race-conscious districting protections.

Many attorneys, however, argued the opposite: that the districts were "among the most extreme partisan gerrymanders enacted in any state over the past half-century." (19) One data point from their filing captures the imbalance. Under the new map, 82 percent of voters in Republican-held districts stayed in the same district as before, compared to just 41 percent of voters in Democratic-held districts. (20) Justice Jorge Labarga dissented alone in Equal Ground Education Fund v. Byrd (2026), writing that the court's own constitution "anticipates that some matters may be so urgent as to require an expedited path," and that "the upcoming 2026 congressional elections affecting the representation of millions of Floridians" met that bar. (21) DeSantis called the ruling final: "The Florida Supreme Court has rejected the challenge to the state's redistricting plan and new map," he said. "This assures that the recently enacted map will be in place for the 2026 election." (22)

Florida isn't a state where one party dominates by these margins; its statewide races are routinely decided by single digits. A map that erases most of that competitiveness doesn't reflect Florida's political reality so much as override it, and it does so using a legal theory that would have to unravel a decade of the state's own case law to survive a real hearing on the merits. But that hearing may not come in time to matter. The case is currently sitting in Leon County, and DeSantis has already called the map final for 2026 regardless of how it resolves. Louisiana faced the same sequence with Callais: the Supreme Court didn't rule until after early voting in the state's primary had already begun, and the map governed the election anyway. If Florida's severability theory eventually loses on the merits, it will lose after the votes it shaped have already been counted. The legal question may be settled in time to matter for 2028 elections, but it won't be settled in time to matter for 2026.

Endnotes

1. Florida Constitution, art. III, § 20, “Standards for Establishing Congressional District Boundaries,” Florida Senate.

2. League of Women Voters of Florida v. Detzner, 172 So. 3d 363 (Fla. 2015).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.; League of Women Voters of Florida v. Detzner, 172 So. 3d 363 (Fla. 2015).

5. Adam Edelman, “DeSantis Draws Congressional Map That Would Dramatically Expand GOP’s Edge in Florida,” NBC News, April 20, 2022; “Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Approves Map That Could Give GOP 4 More U.S. House Seats,” CBS News, April 22, 2022; “Federal Court Upholds Florida’s Congressional Map,” Democracy Docket, March 27, 2024.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. “Black Voters Matter v. Byrd,” State Court Report; “Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute v. Byrd,” League of Women Voters.

9. Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, Inc. v. Secretary, Florida Department of State, No. SC2023-1671 (Fla. July 17, 2025).

10. Alex Seitz-Wald and Matt Dixon, “Florida Legislature Passes Redistricting Plan Creating Four Additional GOP-Leaning House Seats,” NBC News, April 29, 2026.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. David Axelman, memorandum to the Florida Legislature, in Combined Congressional Map Submission by Governor DeSantis, Florida Senate, April 27, 2026.

14. Ibid.

15. Common Cause Florida, et al. v. Byrd, et al., Complaint, Circuit Court of the Second Judicial Circuit, Leon County, Florida, filed May 5, 2026.

16. Equal Ground Education Fund, Inc. v. Secretary, Florida Department of State, No. SC2026-0857 (Fla. June 10, 2026).

17. Associated Press, “Florida Supreme Court Rejects a Challenge to a New Redistricting Map,” WUSF, June 11, 2026.

18. Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___ (2026).

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. “Florida Supreme Court Rules New Congressional Map Can Stand for 2026 Midterms,” Florida Politics, June 10, 2026.