DeSantis looks to overturn Florida voters’ partisan gerrymandering ban
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office laid out an argument this week for overturning Florida’s partisan gerrymandering ban entirely, after months of publicly saying his extraordinary push to redraw Florida’s congressional districts mid-decade was for non-partisan reasons.
DeSantis has long denied that he was succumbing to pressure to draw new maps that increase Republicans’ chances of winning more seats in Congress, after Donald Trump pushed Texas to do so last summer and Democrats in California and Virginia responded by drawing maps favoring their party.
Republican efforts to draw more favorable districts in red states were largely unsuccessful, however, and national GOP groups have been looking to Florida to add Republican-favored seats ahead of the November midterms.
But Florida is different from those states: 63% of Florida voters agreed to place a ban partisan gerrymandering in the state Constitution in 2010. In most other states, partisan gerrymandering is legal.
Well-aware of this state restriction, known as the Fair Districts Amendment, DeSantis said earlier this year he was pursuing redistricting because of the state’s population growth and a potential Supreme Court ruling on the federal Voting Rights Act, not for partisan gain.
But on the eve of a special session in Tallahassee to redraw the state’s 28 congressional districts in a way that could cut Democratic representation in half, he laid out an argument to state lawmakers for why the Fair Districts Amendment should be treated as unconstitutional in its entirety instead — marking a sharp pivot from his skirting of the state’s partisan gerrymandering ban to taking it head-on.
His proposed map has just four seats favoring Democrats, compared to the current eight. State lawmakers are set to vote on it this week.
READ MORE: Will DeSantis’ congressional map change the district where you live?
The governor’s general counsel, David Axelman, laid out DeSantis’ argument in a letter to state lawmakers Monday. He said he expects a Supreme Court ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case about the federal Voting Rights Amendment to change how lawmakers consider race in drawing congressional districts.
The Supreme Court has not yet ruled in that case, but DeSantis is now arguing the new maps are necessary to remove any considerations of race anyway.
Axelman argued that Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment is invalid in its entirety because it includes a clause mentioning race. Specifically, it bars lawmakers from “denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process.”
READ MORE: South Florida Democrats may be knocked out of Congress by DeSantis’ new FL map
DeSantis said that provision requires lawmakers to consider race and undermines the Fair Districts Amendment as a whole — paving the legal pathway to getting around the state’s partisan gerrymandering ban altogether.
“The FDA was sold to the voters as a package,” Axelman wrote. “And because one part is unconstitutional, there’s little reason to think that voters would have approved the remaining parts by themselves.”
Florida’s House Democratic leader Fentrice Driskell said that argument is “legal contortionism at best. It’s legal fiction at worst.”
She pointed to the pressure the White House put on Republican states to pursue mid-decade redistricting last year as evidence the effort is purely partisan.
Typically, redistricting is pursued once a decade following the U.S. census through a deliberate process led by the Legislature. Florida last redrew its congressional map in 2022, with DeSantis breaking precedent by pushing his own map through the House and Senate, drawing boundaries in a way that helped the GOP pick up more seats in Congress and — with the blessing of the Florida Supreme Court — eradicated a North Florida district drawn to ensure Black voters’ representation.
“We’ve been experiencing population growth for a very long time, and never, not once, have we engaged in mid-decade redistricting. So it begs the question, why are we doing this now?” Driskell told reporters Monday.
“The answer, plain and simple, is that because Donald Trump wants to keep a Republican majority in the midterms and so the Republicans in the House and Senate and the governor’s mansion are bending over backwards to please him,” she said.
The governor’s office did not respond to questions from the Miami Herald about efforts overturn the state’s Fair Districts Amendment. His staff was set to answer questions from the state Legislature Tuesday, before lawmakers vote on the proposal later this week.
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