A Leon County Circuit Judge has denied a motion to put off use of a new congressional map in Florida until after the Midterms.
Judge Joshua Hawkes, who was appointed to his seat by Gov. Ron DeSantis, said he could not immediately determine whether a challenge brought by voting rights groups would likely win on the merits. Presented with 1,900 pages of briefs from plaintiffs challenging the map and more than 220 pages of evidence defending the state, he said a decision could not be rendered at this stage.
Hawkes cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision increasing a threshold for drawing minority majority seats, the state said a new map must be implemented in a timely fashion. He said DeSantis’ office was effectively within the law to declare the congressional map approved in 2022, notbaly one DeSantis’ office designed and strongarmed through the process, was no longer legal.
“The 2022 map was declared unconstitutional when the Governor and Legislature replaced it with the 2026 map challenged in this litigation,” Hawkes wrote. “The political branch’s position was in anticipation of a changing legal landscape with the Supreme Court’s pending ruling in Louisiana v. Callais… Plaintiffs’ evidence focuses on challenging the constitutionality of the 2026 map, but does not sufficiently challenge the political branches’ finding that CD-20 in the 2022 map was drawn with impermissible racial intent.”
Elias’ law firm posted on its Democracy Docket account that a request has already been filed for Hawkes’ order by reviewed by the state appeals court.
But Hawkes wrote that even if he were to put the map on hold, the appropriate action would not be to restore the map used in 2022 and 2024, but to order the Florida Legislature back into Special Session to draw a new map based on the recent court ruling. But that would take too much time when congressional pre-qualification began this week.
“The election machinery of the state is already underway,” he wrote. “… The primary is less than three months away, and the general less than six months. The public interest weighs more in favor of certainty than a haphazard judicial mandate of discarded maps.”
Attorney General James Uthmeier cheered the decision as victory over a nationally known Democratic lawyer.
“Once again, we beat Marc Elias,” Uthmeier posted. “Florida’s new congressional district maps stand.
The order is already being appealed, and will likely land before the Florida Supreme Court for a final decision.
“We will continue our fight to protect the will of Floridians who overwhelmingly voted to ban partisan gerrymandering in this state,” said Common Cause Florida Executive Director Amy Keith. “Because Floridians of all political backgrounds are so clearly against partisan gerrymandering, we will exhaust all legal options to make sure a map this partisan does not last the rest of this decade.”
Plaintiffs challenging the map say the new cartography, proposed by DeSantis’ Office and approved by Florida’s Legislature in a Special Session, is illegal.
The map results in 24 congressional districts where a majority of voters supported Republican Donald Trump for President in 2024 and just four where a majority voted for Democrat Kamala Harris. Florida’s delegation currently has eight Democratic U.S. Representatives, a number that could be cut in half under the new map.
“This is just about as clear cut of an example of prohibitive partisan gerrymandering as one could think of,” said Brad Heard, Deputy Legal Director to the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the groups that sued over the map.
U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, who under the new map saw his district shift from one where 51.2% of voters backed Harris for President in 2024 to one where 58.2% voted for Trump, said Hawkes’ decision in itself showed political intent.
“Judge Hawkes’ partisan opinion will live in infamy. His highest duty is to the Florida Constitution. He ignored it,” the Kissimmee Democrat said. “DeSantis’ bragged about a partisan map. His mapmaker admitted partisan intent. Then the judge did legal acrobatics to avoid it. Floridians will remember this betrayal.”
Florida voters in 2010 passed the Fair Districts amendment to the state constitution barring the use of partisan intent to draw a map favoring or disfavoring a political party.
But DeSantis’ administration has argued that a 2025 Florida Supreme Court decision upholding a map also drawn by the Governor’s Office severely undercut language in the Fair Districts amendment prohibiting the diminishment of minority voting power. Mohammad Jazil, an attorney for Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, said it’s impossible to discard that part of the amendment without presuming all of it, including the ban on partisan intent, should be null and void.
The Governor cheered the decision by Hawkes.
“Let’s roll!” DeSantis posted on X.
Administration officials argued in a court brief that plaintiffs have not in the few weeks since the map was unveiled come close to proving partisan intent.
“Plaintiffs haven’t met the fact-specific test for showing that the State has run afoul of the prohibitions on partisan gerrymandering. Nor have they shown that the State has run afoul of the preferences for compactness and adherence to political and geographic boundaries,” reads a brief filed by Uthmeier’s Office.
Plaintiffs say it’s not a hard case to make. They point to DeSantis’ Office releasing the map to Fox News with districts colored in red and blue to show GOP gains as proof that the map was made to please Republicans. And the timing of the redraw, in the midst of multistate redistricting wars by GOP- and Democratic-controlled states, shows the clearest motive for a mid-decade remake of political boundaries.
“While we are disappointed by today’s decision, this case is far from over,” said Marcia Johnson, Chief of Activation and Justice for the League of Women Voters.
“Floridians voted overwhelmingly to reject partisan gerrymandering, and we will not allow politicians to undermine those protections for political gain. As attacks on fair representation intensify nationwide, the League of Women Voters will continue leading the fight for maps that respect voters’ voices and constitutional rights.”
Partisan leans on new map. Image via Dave’s Redistricting.