The Florida Supreme Court on Friday swatted down a legal challenge to Gov. Ron DeSantis' plan to redraw the state's 28 congressional districts, rejecting a petition from two voters who sought to block the governor's call for a special legislative session on redistricting. The ruling removes the last immediate obstacle between DeSantis and a new set of maps before the 2026 midterms.
Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz wrote that the voters' attempt to block both the special session and Secretary of State Cord Byrd's decision to push back the congressional qualifying week from April to June fell outside the scope of the petition they had filed. The court's reasoning was straightforward: the governor and the secretary of state were operating within their defined authority.
"The Governor has the authority to convene the Legislature in special session by proclamation."
"The Secretary of State is the chief election officer of the state and has the authority to interpret the election laws."
That's the chief justice of Florida's highest court, not offering a political opinion, but citing the plain structure of state government. The petition wasn't closed.
According to CBS News, DeSantis in January called a special session of the Legislature beginning April 20 to redraw all 28 of Florida's U.S. House districts. The move was made in anticipation of a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a redistricting case out of Louisiana that DeSantis believes will strike down part of the Voting Rights Act. He claims such a ruling would require Florida to redraw some of its districts.
Secretary of State Byrd moved the qualifying week back to June to accommodate the new timeline. That's not chaos. That's preparation.
The National Redistricting Foundation, backed by the two Florida voters, tried to stop all of it before it started. The court said no. Justice Adam Tanenbaum, who was appointed to the bench in January by DeSantis, wrote a separate concurrence noting the court never even reached the underlying merits of the petition. In his view, it should have been dismissed outright rather than merely rejected.
In other words, the challenge was procedurally deficient before it was substantively weak.
Florida isn't operating in isolation. President Donald Trump has called on GOP-led states to redraw their districts ahead of the midterm elections to prevent Democrats from taking the U.S. House. Texas has already done so. California has followed suit with its own redistricting moves.
This is the game as it's actually played. Democrats spent years treating redistricting as a moral crusade when they were out of power and a political weapon when they held it. Now Republicans in major states are acting with the same urgency, and the reaction from the left has been predictably theatrical.
The voters who brought this challenge weren't arguing that the new maps would be unconstitutional. They were trying to prevent the maps from being drawn at all. There's a difference between challenging a gerrymander and trying to stop a legislature from legislating. The court recognized that distinction.
Florida voters approved an anti-gerrymandering amendment in 2010. That amendment still exists. Any maps the Legislature produces in the April special session will still need to comply with it, and they'll still face legal scrutiny after the fact. The amendment is a constraint on the output, not a prohibition on the process.
Critics who invoke the 2010 amendment as a reason to block redistricting entirely are conflating two separate questions. Can the governor call a special session to redraw maps? Yes. Must the resulting maps comply with state law? Also yes. The court answered the first question. The second will come later.
The Legislature convenes its special session on April 20, running alongside whatever remains of its regular 60-day session. House Speaker Daniel Perez convened a special committee to examine redistricting last fall, but the panel didn't produce any proposals. That groundwork, or lack of it, means the April session will be starting with a relatively blank slate.
The qualifying week now sits in June, giving candidates and the state time to absorb whatever maps emerge. If the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the Louisiana case before or during the session, the Legislature will have live guidance to work from. If it doesn't, Florida will be drawing maps based on an anticipated legal landscape, a gamble, but a calculated one.
DeSantis has the authority. The court confirmed it. Now the only question is what the maps look like.
