DeSantis Signs an Unconstitutional Map Into Law — And His Own People Admitted It
On May 4th, 2026, Ron DeSantis posted three words on social media — “Signed, sealed, delivered” — along with a map of Florida painted almost entirely red.
What he signed into law that day is, by the legal standard Florida voters themselves established, flatly unconstitutional. Not allegedly. Not arguably. His own lawyer said so on the record. His own map drawer admitted it on the record. The Republican sponsor of the bill said it on the floor of the Legislature. And DeSantis signed it anyway — because he believes he can, the courts haven’t stopped him yet, and stopping him before November is exactly the point.
Here is what just happened to your state.
What the Map Does
Florida currently sends 20 Republicans and 8 Democrats to Congress. The new map — designed entirely by DeSantis’s office, not by the Legislature, not by an independent commission, and leaked to Fox News an hour before DeSantis even sent it to state lawmakers — is engineered to flip four of those eight Democratic seats.
The map specifically targets four incumbent Democratic members of Congress: Kathy Castor of Tampa, Darren Soto of Orlando, and Lois Frankel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both of Miami. Their districts have been redrawn — cracked, packed, and reconfigured — to make it functionally impossible for them to win in November. The legal complaint filed against it describes the new map as “one of the most extreme gerrymanders in American history” by traditional partisan gerrymandering measures.
Florida’s congressional delegation is currently 20-8 in favor of Republicans. In a state Trump won with 56% of the vote. In a state that political analysts increasingly describe as less of a Republican fortress than Republicans publicly claim. The new map, if it survives legal challenge and performs as designed, could push that to 24-4.
That is the goal. Not fair representation. Not accurately reflecting the will of Florida voters. Four more Republican seats in the U.S. House before the midterms.
The Part That Should Infuriate Every Florida Voter
In 2010, Florida voters passed the Fair Districts Amendments to the state constitution by a wide margin. They did exactly what democracy is supposed to allow citizens to do: they saw a problem, they organized, they put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, and they passed it with overwhelming support.
The Fair Districts Amendments do two things with crystal clarity. They ban drawing congressional districts to favor a political party. And they ban drawing districts to favor or disfavor an incumbent.
What DeSantis just signed into law does both. Explicitly. Openly. With the people who drew and sponsored the map admitting it out loud.
State Representative Jenna Persons-Mulicka, the Republican who sponsored the map in the House, told her own colleagues multiple times during debate that the map “does not align with Florida’s constitution.” She said it anyway. She voted for it anyway. She carried it across the finish line anyway — on the theory that DeSantis has developed a “viable legal theory” that might, someday, convince a court to let him ignore the constitution Florida voters approved.
Jason Parada, the DeSantis administration official who actually drew the map, acknowledged before the Legislature that he used political performance data to design it. That is the definition of what the Fair Districts Amendment prohibits. He said it in public, in a committee hearing, and the Legislature passed the map anyway.
DeSantis’s own general counsel wrote a memo arguing that the Fair Districts provisions protecting minority-performing districts might be unconstitutional — and therefore the entire amendment, including its ban on partisan gerrymandering, might be unenforceable. His own attorney, Mo Jazil, acknowledged before the Legislature that this theory is “the Governor’s own legal theory, not a conclusion any court has reached.”
Not a conclusion any court has reached.
DeSantis is not operating on settled law. He is operating on a theory he invented, that no court has validated, to override a constitutional amendment his own state’s voters passed by a wide margin sixteen years ago — because he wants four more Republican seats in Congress before November.
Even Republican Senator Don Gaetz, presenting the bill on the Senate floor, distanced himself from DeSantis’s legal theory: “I believe the rest of the Fair Districts Amendment could and should and ought to stand. I don’t think we should do gerrymandering on the basis of political partisanship.”
The man floor-managing the bill for Republicans said, out loud, that he doesn’t think they should do what the bill does. And then the Senate passed it 21-17, almost entirely along party lines.
Five Republicans — four in the Senate, one in the House — voted no. They are the only ones in their party who appeared to read the constitution they swore to uphold.
Who This Hurts
The Florida NAACP’s Cynthia Slater testified before the Legislature during the special session: “The people delivered a mandate, not a suggestion, to not draw partisan maps. How can you sleep at night knowing that this decision is in your hands?”
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried was more direct: “Today Ron DeSantis attempted to disenfranchise millions of Black, brown, and Jewish Floridians by stripping them of representation by signing illegal congressional maps into law.”
The maps target districts that currently elect Black and Hispanic representatives — districts that exist specifically because previous courts found Florida was required under the Voting Rights Act to create them. DeSantis’s position is that those protections are themselves unconstitutional, and therefore eliminating the districts that protect minority voting power is not just legal but required.
No court has agreed with that position. DeSantis signed it into law anyway — on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act in a Louisiana case, creating what he apparently views as an opening to proceed with the map before courts can stop him.
A majority of Florida voters oppose the redistricting plan, according to polling from Emerson College. The people who live in this state, in a poll conducted after the map was proposed, said they don’t want it.
It was signed anyway.
The Process Was a Farce
DeSantis called a special legislative session specifically for redistricting. The session opened. The map was introduced. It was voted out of committee and passed both chambers within roughly 48 hours. There was almost no public input. Testimony was limited. The normal process of public hearings, independent review, and deliberation — the process that allows Florida voters to actually participate in shaping the maps that determine their representation — was compressed to the point of meaninglessness.
And the map was leaked to Fox News before DeSantis sent it to the legislators who were supposed to be debating it. That detail alone tells you everything about who this process was designed to serve.
What Happens Next
Lawsuits have already been filed. The Elias Law Group — which has led Democratic redistricting challenges across the country — filed the first challenge the same day DeSantis signed the map. Partner Abha Khanna stated plainly: “The question is not whether this map is a partisan gerrymander, because it is. The question is why Governor DeSantis and Florida Republicans think they can blatantly ignore the Florida Constitution and the instructions of their own voters.”
Florida Democratic Party Chair Fried vowed the party will challenge the maps aggressively, with support from coalition partners nationwide.
Whether the courts will move fast enough to block the map before the 2026 elections is the central question. The timeline is brutally short. Candidate qualifying has already been moved to June to accommodate the new districts. The midterms are in November. DeSantis is betting that the legal process will not catch up with him in time — that even if courts eventually rule the map unconstitutional, Republicans will have already won the seats, and the damage to democratic representation will already be done.
That is not a legal theory. That is a strategy.
You live in Florida. You voted in 2010 to ban this. You passed a constitutional amendment with your own votes specifically to prevent exactly what Ron DeSantis just signed into law.
He did it anyway. He had his lawyers invent a theory to justify it. He had his map drawer admit he used partisan data. He had his bill sponsor tell the Legislature it doesn’t comply with the state constitution. And he signed it, posted “Signed, sealed, delivered” on social media, and sent a map painted red to Fox News.
The lawsuits are filed. The courts will move as fast as courts move.
In the meantime, your representation in Congress is being engineered — not by your votes, not by the constitution you approved, but by a governor who decided that the rules apply to everyone except the people making them.
That is what happened in your state this week.
Be angry. Stay loud. And make sure every eligible Florida voter you know is registered and ready for November — because if this map survives, every single vote is going to matter more than ever.
