The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the Legislature’s congressional map, crafted under Gov. Ron DeSantis’s guidance.
A majority of justices ruled that plaintiffs—led by the Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute—failed to demonstrate racial discrimination or the necessity of preserving the North Florida district once held by a Black Democrat. With that decision, the map is now final, ensuring no changes to district boundaries for the 2026 midterms or the remainder of the decade, Florida Politics reported.
In the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz, the court endorsed DeSantis’s argument that the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause takes precedence over Florida’s Fair Districts requirement forbidding any diminishment of minority voting strength during redistricting, the outlet said.
“The Legislature’s obligation to comply with the Equal Protection Clause is superior to its obligation to comply with the Non-Diminishment Clause as interpreted by our Court,” he wrote. “The plaintiffs did not prove the possibility of complying with both the Non-Diminishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause in North Florida. Therefore, they did not meet their burden to prove the invalidity of the Enacted Plan.”
Plaintiffs criticized the decision. “Today is another dark day in the history of Florida. With today’s ruling, the Florida Supreme Court has turned its back on Black voters, the state constitution, and the fundamental principles of representative democracy,” Genesis Robinson, Executive Director of Equal Ground, one of the groups challenging the map, said, according to the outlet.
“By allowing a map that clearly diminishes Black voting power to stand in a 5-1 decision, the Court has sent a chilling message: the constitutional rights of Black Floridians are negotiable, and the will of the people can be ignored, even when it is written into the very fabric of our laws. At the heart of this case was a basic question: Do Black Floridians have the right to fair representation in Congress? Today, the Court answered with a resounding no.”
In the circuit court, the plaintiffs waived a trial and, with the state’s attorneys, asked the court to rule solely on the legality of dismantling the previous configuration of Florida’s 5th Congressional District, formerly represented by Rep. Al Lawson, a black Democrat.
DeSantis criticized the Lawson district—which stretched from Tallahassee to Jacksonville to create a Black-majority seat—and vetoed the Legislature’s proposed map that retained a similar Jacksonville-area district. Although lawmakers had floated an alternative plan largely preserving Lawson’s district if courts deemed the original map to dilute minority votes, DeSantis ultimately submitted his own redistricting proposal, which the Legislature adopted.
That map helped Florida Republicans gain a net four U.S. House seats in the 2022 election and forced Lawson into a majority-Republican district, where he was defeated by Rep. Neal Dunn (R), the outlet reported.