Florida approves GOP map, fueling nationwide redistricting battle

Florida’s new congressional map could shift the state’s House delegation from a 20-8 Republican edge to as much as 24-4, giving the GOP up to four additional seats and putting a major prize in the broader fight over political control. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the map into law on Monday after the GOP-controlled Legislature approved it days earlier, setting off an immediate legal challenge from voting-rights and civil-rights advocates.

The map was drawn by DeSantis’s staff and uses the same 2020 Census data that underlies Florida’s current map, adopted in 2022. That makes the dispute less about new population counts than about how those lines are drawn and who they advantage. Florida is currently represented in the U.S. House by 20 Republicans and seven Democrats, with one Democratic-leaning seat vacant, a balance that Democrats say the new lines are designed to harden in Republican hands.

Equal Ground Education Fund and 19 Florida voters have already challenged the map in court. Their case argues that the plan violates Florida’s voter-approved anti-gerrymandering standards and was crafted to help Republicans keep control of Congress. Democrats have described the move as an illegal power grab, while Florida Republicans say population growth and legal issues justify revisiting the lines.

The stakes widened after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key section of the Voting Rights Act on April 30, a ruling that could make it easier for states to redraw majority-Black or majority-Latino districts that have often elected Democrats. GOP officials in several southern states took early steps soon after to revisit their maps, and Florida has now become the latest flashpoint in that mid-decade scramble.

CBS News said states including Virginia, Texas, California, Missouri, North Carolina and Utah have also been drawn into the redistricting push ahead of future midterm elections. Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’ executive director of elections and surveys, has been tracking the nationwide moves as part of a broader pattern of partisan line-drawing that could shape the next Congress before a single vote is cast. In Florida, the fight now turns on whether the courts will let the new map stand, or whether the state’s latest power grab runs into the anti-gerrymandering rules voters approved.