The Florida Supreme Court on Friday rejected a petition to block Gov. Ron DeSantis’ move to redraw the state’s congressional districts.
The legal challenge, brought by two Florida voters and supported by the National Redistricting Foundation, was tossed by a unanimous decision by the court.
In a short, two-paragraph ruling, Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz wrote that the request by the voters to block DeSantis’ call for a special session on redistricting in April and the move by Secretary of State Cord Byrd to push back the qualifying week for congressional elections from April to June was beyond the scope of the petition they filed.
“The Governor has the authority to convene the Legislature in special session by proclamation,” Muñiz wrote. “The Secretary of State is the chief election officer of the state and has the authority to interpret the election laws.”
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Justice Adam Tanenbaum, who was appointed to the bench in January by DeSantis, wrote a separate concurrence noting the court did not consider the underlying merits of the petition, so it should have been dismissed, not rejected.
DeSantis in January called a special session of the Legislature starting April 20 to redraw the state’s 28 U.S. House districts. That was originally the same week candidates were set to qualify for the ballot in congressional races, and Byrd moved the qualifying week back to June.
The move was done 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 that allows states to draw districts based on race, even for the purpose of addressing historic discrimination.
Should the court make that ruling, DeSantis claims that would require Florida to redraw some of its districts.
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 done so, but other Democratic-led states, such as California have followed suit. Other states, though, such as Republican-controlled Indiana and Democratic-led Maryland have resisted the push to redraw districts so far.
Expressly partisan redistricting could be tricky in Florida, where voters approved an anti-gerrymandering amendment in 2010.
Lawmakers are in the middle of their regular 60-day session now, but haven’t addressed any redistricting issues or put forward any proposed maps.
House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, convened a special committee to look into the issue last fall but the panel didn’t produce any proposals.
