(The Center Square) – A U.S. Supreme Court ruling Wednesday “compelled” Florida to redraw congressional districts, second-term Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday a day after the Legislature approved his map plan.
The ruling in a Louisiana redistricting case was issued as the Legislature was debating a bill to redraw congressional districts, potentially giving Republicans a four-seat gain ahead of the midterm elections. Louisiana is expected to redraw its map; five other states have redrawn and implemented; one other has changed because of litigation; and three more states remain tied up in courtrooms.
DeSantis said he’ll sign the bill when it formally reaches his desk. Nationally, that will make the potential net change projection seven additional seats for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.
DeSantis, in a news conference Thursday, said he knew the Louisiana ruling was coming. He called a special session of the Legislature, he said, to redraw the maps in part to correct “racial gerrymandering” in a South Florida district.
“It not only vindicated why we were doing what we were doing,” he said of the Supreme Court ruling, “it compelled us to do what we were doing.”
The South Florida congressional district that partially prompted the redistricting has “these crab claws going out,” the governor said. “It’s ridiculous. That has been fixed.”
He singled out U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., for criticizing Florida’s redistricting efforts. Jeffires said the Democrats would “ aggressively target for defeat” eight incumbent Republican members in Congress if the redistricting bill passed.
Florida’s representation is 20 Republicans, seven Democrats and one vacancy from the resignation of former Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.
“The notion that we would ever deviate from doing what’s right because we are fielding threats from some machine politician in Brooklyn like Hakeem Jeffries, give me a break,” DeSantis said. “That is not happening here.”
Jeffires also condemned the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Louisiana case.
“Republican extremists have embraced voter suppression and racial gerrymandering to desperately cling to power,” he said. “The corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court appointed by Donald Trump has taken a blowtorch to the Voting Rights Act. Why? The extremists need to cheat to win.”
Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, was among those who criticized Florida’s redistricting plan.
“Over the last year, we’ve heard a wide range of excuses from Governor Ron DeSantis about why he wanted to illegally gerrymander congressional districts in Florida,” she said. “The fact of the matter is this: the map that was passed today is a direct response to the president’s call to gerrymander maps to help Republicans and that is illegal under our state’s constitution.”
Critics of the redistricting bill said it was a partisan move to help Republicans, and that it violated a state constitutional amendment approved by voters that makes it illegal to use redistricting for partisan purposes.
DeSantis said predicting was needed to balance population in the congressional districts due to Florida’s rapid population growth in the last few years in addition to correcting “racial gerrymandering” in the South Florida district.
