DeSantis’ Florida redistricting push finds support in unfriendly territory

Florida House leadership appears to be backing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ argument that his proposed congressional map doesn’t need to follow the state’s constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering.

DeSantis’ map would pick up four seats for the GOP, leaving four Democratic-leaning seats out of Florida’s 28 congressional districts.

The governor’s office sent its proposal to lawmakers late Monday morning — a day before lawmakers were scheduled to convene — after first giving a map color-coded by political party exclusively to Fox News.

DeSantis’ office, in a legal memo sent to lawmakers, laid out a plan to dismantle Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment, a voter-adopted ban on drawing maps to favor a political party.

The memo, sent by general counsel David Axelman, implied the governor’s office doesn’t need to follow that law as a whole because the office believes part of it, related to race and redistricting, is unconstitutional.

READ MORE: Will DeSantis’ congressional map change the district where you live?

On Tuesday, lawmakers gathered for a special session to consider the map. Bill sponsor Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, R-Fort Myers, called the memo “persuasive.” Persons-Mulicka stood by House Speaker Daniel Perez’s side at a morning news conference and answered most redistricting questions for him.

“We made a decision in 2022 that was not based on prior legal guidance, but was upheld recently by the Florida Supreme Court,” she said. “We feel confident again in moving forward with the maps presented by the governor’s office.”

In 2022, DeSantis’ office vetoed the congressional map approved by lawmakers. Instead, he strong-armed the Legislature into passing his own plan, which dismantled a seat in North Florida held at the time by Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson.

DeSantis’ office argued the seat, which stretched across the Panhandle to Jacksonville, relied too much on race. The Florida Supreme Court agreed and upheld DeSantis’ map last summer.

But a few weeks later, as President Donald Trump began pushing red states to redistrict to keep the GOP’s control of Congress, DeSantis began floating the idea that there were problems with the map he’d gotten approved.

Axelman, in his memo to lawmakers, said race should never be used in redistricting. He said the U.S. Supreme Court is “poised to affirm this basic non-discrimination principle.”

The court has not yet released its opinion.

Axelman said that the governor’s map makes no attempt to stick to the Fair District Amendment’s requirements on race, and said the race requirements “cannot be severed” from the rest of the requirements, aka the ban on partisan gerrymandering.

In a presentation to the House’s redistricting committee Monday afternoon, officials representing the governor’s office defended the proposal. Holtzman Vogel attorney Mohammad Jazil, who represented the governor’s office, doubled down on DeSantis’ thinking.

“The text of Article 3 Section 20 sets up a tiered structure,“ Jazil said. ”Now what happens when you take a tier out from under you? The structure falls.”

But while he said the governor didn’t need to stick to the prohibition on partisan gerrymandering, he wouldn’t say whether that’s how DeSantis’ office actually acted.

Jason Poreda, an employee in the governor’s office who drew the proposal, told the committee that he was the sole person who drew the map.

When asked if he consulted with anyone else, Poreda said he wasn’t “going to get into any discussions” he had with other staff, which led audience members to let out a frustrated groan.

Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, on Tuesday dismissed the idea that politics weren’t at play.

“You don’t send a colored map of red versus blue to Fox News without the intention of trying to ignore Florida’s constitutional standards and requirements around Fair Districts,” Eskamani said.

Perez, who has worked over the past two years to assert the House as an independent body, told lawmakers Tuesday that he plans to put the governor’s proposal to a vote on Wednesday.

The House did not put forward its own map. Neither did the Florida Senate.

“The governor drew a map, and it is our job to entertain that map, to debate it, to converse it and to eventually vote on it,” Perez said.

Some lawmakers said they hadn’t been given enough time to fully evaluate the proposal.

Rep. Susan Valdés, a Tampa Republican, said she thought the Legislature was “jumping the gun a little bit.”

“I wish we had a little bit more time to study and not just rush into things.”

Valdés said she was less concerned about the shape of the new districts, and more worried about whether the act of redrawing them was constitutional.

When Rep. Linda Chaney was asked about the idea of splitting St. Petersburg into two districts, she made a face and took a long pause.

“I like that the district doesn’t cross the bay anymore. I think that makes sense,” the St. Pete Beach Republican said.

This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 12:46 PM.