Florida Republicans are proposing a plan to redraw the state’s political boundaries ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a move that could reshape legislative and congressional districts but would also face constitutional and legal hurdles.
Redistricting is the process of adjusting electoral maps to reflect population changes. It normally occurs once every 10 years following the U.S. Census, when congressional seats are reapportioned among the states. Mid-decade redistricting is unusual, and in Florida it would have to be justified on constitutional grounds.
Governor Ron DeSantis said in a press conference in Melbourne on Aug. 11 that the change is necessary due to "racial gerrymandering" that needs to be addressed. He also emphasized errors in data from the 2020 census.
Michael T. Morley, professor of law and faculty director of the Election Law Center at Florida State University, said any attempt to move forward would likely spark debate over both motives and legality.
“This is one of those things where politicians of both parties will publicly announce certain goals, and I think that many realists would suspect they actually have other, much more partisan, self-interested goals at issue,” Morley said.
Florida’s Constitution includes protections against political gerrymandering, but Morley said there has been criticism of the court's enforcement of that..
“In recent years—and again, this can depend on who you ask—some critics have contended the Florida Supreme Court has not policed it, has not enforced it as vigorously as perhaps they might have liked,” he said. “Certainly there are examples of the Florida Supreme Court invalidating districts based on partisan motivations and that the court concluded were drawn to achieve partisan ends.”
Morley said that if state lawmakers push to redraw maps before 2030, they would need to frame the effort in neutral, legal terms.
“If they nevertheless wanted to proceed, they would have to be able to present their proposals in nonpartisan terms, in terms of more ensuring that districts are equal populations, reflecting the dramatic shifts that have occurred due to COVID-related moves and other population shifts within and across states,” he said.
Morley clarified the distinction between reapportionment and redistricting, the redistribution being what determines the actual number of seats in a legislative body.
“There’s no way to do a new reapportionment in the middle of a decade,” Morley said. “So every state is going to keep the same number of seats in the House of Representatives.”
States are obligated to make sure districts remain balanced.
“States are under a constitutional obligation to ensure that congressional districts have as equal populations as possible,” he said. He added that the Supreme Court gives states slightly more flexibility when it comes to legislative districts. “Even when congressional districts are drawn, they’re never going to be perfectly accurate in the first place. With regard to state legislative districts, the Supreme Court also applies this one-person, one-vote principle, but it gives states more leeway. States are allowed to have a little bit more population variance among legislative districts than they are for congressional districts.”
That means Florida lawmakers could argue that population shifts since the pandemic have made some districts too imbalanced to wait until 2030 to redraw. If changes are made, however, their impact could vary widely.
“For any given state, some districts are likely to be completely unaffected,” Morley said. “For other districts, either voters themselves might find themselves placed into a different district, represented by a different incumbent, and voting for new candidates. Or they might stay in the same district, but the bounds of that district might be different, which means they’re going to be grouped together with different municipalities [and] with different voters, and so they might go from being part of a perennially losing coalition in their district … to one where their preferred candidate frequently wins, or vice versa.”
At the federal level, the rules of redistricting may soon change. The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered re-argument in a case involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states to create majority-minority districts in certain circumstances.
“Section 2 of the VRA has resulted in the creation of many majority-minority districts, most of which are held by Democrats, many of which are held by African-Americans,” Morley said. “One of the reasons I think that redistricting is currently premature is we don’t even know what the rules of the process are yet. We don’t even know what the Supreme Court is going to do in this case.”
The proposal is part of nation-wide redistricting effort, most notably in California and Texas, both of which are trying to create more democrat and republican seats respectively.
Florida's current congressional makeup comprises of 20 republicans and 8 democrats, with the proposed changes poising to potentially add two additional republican seats at the cost of two democrat seats.
“We have 28 now, we'd have 29, 30, 31, maybe. Who knows?” Gov. DeSantis said at the press conference.
Gov. DeSantis also said he will be working with the legislature to discuss the terms of the redistricting.