Sixteen years ago, Florida voters sent a clear message to political leaders, overwhelmingly voting in favor of an amendment to the state constitution that would limit politicians’ ability to gerrymander districts. But a Florida trial court last month refused to grant a preliminary injunction against Congressional maps drawn as part of President Donald Trump’s partisan push for mid-decade redistricting to undermine the will of voters. Last week, the Florida Superior Court denied the plaintiffs’ emergency motion to block the use of the map while the lawsuit continues. This means the new map, which aims to increase Republicans’ seats by up to four seats, will remain in place in the midterm elections.
In 2010, after four years of work by a nonpartisan citizen group organized under the name FairDistrictsFlorida.org, Floridians voted for a constitutional amendment that created strict rules for drawing legislative and congressional districts. In other words, electoral districts could not be drawn with the intention of favoring incumbents or political parties. We cannot reduce the voting power of minorities. Districts were to be compact, evenly populated, and to follow recognizable local boundaries.
These requirements were included in two citizen initiatives known as the Fair Districts Amendment, which passed with 63 percent of the vote.
Drafting the amendment in a way that maximizes its chances of passage and maintains the legal effect of eliminating gerrymandering was not easy. I knew that because I was the campaign chair for FairDistrictsFlorida.org. Before finalizing the content and language of the amendment, a bipartisan drafting committee consulted with a broad and diverse group of election experts and opinion leaders and incorporated their recommendations. For example, community leaders expressed concern that if the amendment passed, it would reduce the voting power of racial minorities. Language was created to address that concern. Care was taken to ensure that the wording on the ballot paper was clear and easy to understand.
Under Florida law, the Florida Supreme Court was required to review the proposed amendment to determine whether it addressed multiple subjects or was vague or misleading. The court passed the ballot amendment. To put the initiative on the ballot, signatures from more than 1.6 million Florida voters supporting the amendment were collected and verified by election officials.
As campaign leaders, we knew it was important that this effort be bipartisan and that we pay significant attention to coalition development. Our board of directors, which provided strategic guidance, was comprised of Republicans and Democrats. We were in constant contact with our supporters and the media. The message was consistent and disciplined. As a result, the amendment received frequent and positive media coverage. All major newspapers in the state published multiple editorials supporting the measure.
But from the beginning, these efforts encountered fierce opposition from lawmakers in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., other elected officials, and professional partisans.
Politicians opposed to the amendment employed several strategies to prevent its passage, but were unsuccessful. They attempted to personally blackmail the movement’s leaders. Congress voted to put the “poison pill” amendment on the ballot. If this amendment passes, the new standard would become invalid. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature’s amendment was intentionally misleading and removed it from the ballot. Opponents of the ballot measure unsuccessfully sued in court to remove the amendment from the ballot. In the end, they spent $4.3 million on an unsuccessful media campaign to stop the amendment from passing.
Voters approved the amendment on Election Day, and litigation to invalidate the amendment began almost immediately. At 2:30 a.m., just hours after the amendment was passed, the Florida House of Representatives and two members of Congress filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the amendment from taking effect. This was the first of several lawsuits over six years. A coalition of groups supporting the amendment fought and won each case, defeating four federal challenges and securing eight favorable decisions from the Florida Supreme Court.
After the 2010 census, the Fair District Florida Coalition challenged the maps drawn by Congress in 2012. The state court judge in charge of the challenge found that state legislative leaders “colluded” with Republican operatives to “manipulate and influence the redistricting process” by secretly developing a plan to thwart public opinion and pass a congressional map that “mocks” the language of the new constitution. The state Supreme Court agreed and ordered the map to be redrawn according to the principles enshrined in the Fair Districts Amendment. These court-ordered maps were put in place for the 2016 election. The result was an immediate shift toward fairness and balance in partisan representation in Congress and the Florida Senate.
When Congress redistricted after the 2020 Census, it sought to follow constitutional restrictions imposed by Floridians. This didn’t sit well with some of Tallahassee’s political establishment, including Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). As lawmakers passed a compliant legislative map, the governor tweeted that it was “DOA” (dead on arrival) and vowed to veto it.
The governor instead insisted that the Legislature pass a staff-drafted map that eliminated the only district in North Florida that has consistently elected black legislators, a clear violation of the amendment’s ban on diminishing the ability of minorities to elect members of their own choice. Nevertheless, the governor’s map was upheld by the Florida Supreme Court, which recently moved sharply to the right with the appointment of five new justices by DeSantis.
Then, in the summer of 2025, President Trump directed red states to redraw their congressional boundaries to create additional Republican districts for the 2026 midterm elections. Mr. DeSantis almost immediately announced that he expected the Florida Legislature to comply with that directive, and announced that he would convene a special legislative session at the end of April 2026 for that purpose. The timing was such that it would almost certainly be impossible to complete a court challenge to the new map before the June nomination deadline.
Once the special session began, it became clear that Congress had nothing to do with drawing the map. The governor had ordered his staff to draw maps that ignored the Fair Districts Amendment’s constitutional limits on partisan favoritism and protections for racial and linguistic minority voters. The governor provided the map to lawmakers 24 hours before the session began. As a result, the map added four likely Republican seats and redrawn the state’s only remaining majority-black congressional district, significantly reducing the share of black voters.
Sixty-three percent of Floridians voted in favor of the Fair Districts Amendment to prevent exactly what just happened: the passage of gerrymandered maps that favor the dominant party and weaken black political power. The majority of Floridians want fairly drawn districts, as required by the Florida Constitution. However, for political reasons, the governor decided to ignore the will of the people and ignore the Constitution, and insisted that the Legislature take similar action.
This should be a wake-up call to all Floridians about how much the state’s government has deteriorated since 2010. Rather than covertly ignoring constitutional obligations as they did in 2012, this year the governor and Legislature publicly announced that they were ignoring constitutional obligations. And unlike the cases that followed the passage of the Fair Districts Amendment, today’s Florida courts appear unwilling to stand up to partisan forces. Where are the checks and balances? What constitutional protections will our government ignore next?
Ellen Freidin was the campaign chair for FairDistrictsFlorida.org.
Recommended citation: Ellen Freidin Florida courts and politicians ignored the people’s messageSᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (June 18, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/florida-courts-and-politicians-ignored-peoples-message
