The Florida House of Representatives approved a new congressional map that could potentially yield four additional U.S. House seats for Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.

The map, which Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled on Monday, passed in an 83-28 vote during a special session.

Gov. Ron DeSantis Reveals Proposed Congressional Map As Florida Legislature Nears Special Session

Under the new map, Republicans would be favored in 24 of the state's 28 congressional districts.

Republicans currently hold 20 of Florida's U.S. House seats.

Roll Call has more:

According to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, the targeted Democrat-held seats include Rep. Kathy Castor’s Tampa-area district and Rep. Darren Soto’s seat in the Orlando area. A pair of blue South Florida seats would also shift toward Republicans, potentially jeopardizing the reelections of Democrats Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

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Democrats in the state House sought to recess debate Wednesday to process the Supreme Court ruling, but Republicans opposed such a delay.

“This bill is not redistricting reform. It’s a partisan map drawn in secret, on demand from Washington, and shoved through this chamber on a clock designed to keep the public out of the room,” state House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell said during debate.

By a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court found that Louisiana should not have been forced to draw a second Black-majority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act and that the map it drew as a result violated the Constitution.

"The SCOTUS ruling also invalidates the below provisions of the FL Constitution requiring the use of race in redistricting:  '…districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice,'" DeSantis said.

Florida Phoenix shared further:

DeSantis had said previously that the Legislature would be “forced” to redraw the state’s map if the court weighed in as he predicted.

“Called this one months ago,” the governor posted on social media. “The decision implicates a district in FL — the legal infirmities of which have been corrected in the newly-drawn (and soon to be enacted) map.”

If the Senate passes the map and DeSantis signs it into law, Florida would become the latest state to redistrict its congressional delegation in the middle of the decade, following red states such as Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri.

Blue states such as California and Virginia have followed suit, all coming after President Donald Trump told Texas GOP lawmakers last year to do so to protect GOP control of the House in this year’s midterm elections.

During debate on the House floor, Democrats seized on an admission made Tuesday by Jason Poreda, the governor’s staffer who drew the map, that he did use partisan data in creating it. Florida’s Fair Districts Amendment passed by the voters in 2010 bans partisan gerrymandering.

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“The man who drew this map testified under oath that he used partisan data to draw up every single district,” said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell. “Every single one. And when the governor’s attorney was asked whether Democratic voters were being underrepresented in our congressional delegation, his answer was, ‘That this is a normative question.’

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