The Sunshine State is bringing the heat to the nationwide redistricting battle, following Virginia’s approval of hyper-partisan congressional district maps. Governor Ron DeSantis (R) unveiled Florida’s proposed congressional district maps this week, aiming to strip Democrats of as many as four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The governor noted that, over the course of his tenure, Florida has “moved from a Democrat majority to a 1.5 million Republican advantage,” which congressional district maps ought to represent, he suggested.

Initially, DeSantis had said that Florida would likely wait to redraw congressional district lines until the U.S. Supreme Court issues what is expected to be a landmark ruling on the Voting Rights Act (VRA). That happened Wednesday when the justices decided that congressional district maps cannot be arranged on the basis of voters’ races, which is prohibited by Section 2 of the VRA. “Drawing maps based on race, which is reflected in our current congressional districts, is unconstitutional and should be prohibited,” DeSantis said of his state’s proposed maps. “Our new map for 2026 makes good on my promise to conduct mid-decade redistricting, and it more fairly represents the makeup of Florida today.”

At present, Republicans hold 20 of Florida’s 28 congressional seats. Seven are held by Democrats and one is vacant, having been recently vacated by former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D), who the House Ethics Committee found guilty of 25 violations of campaign finance laws and regulations, criminal laws, the Ethics in Government Act, the Code of Ethics for Government Service, and House rules, mostly related to millions of dollars in fraud and embezzlement. The maps proposed by DeSantis would likely strip Democrats of five House seats, including the one left vacant by Cherfilus-McCormick, leaving them only three. Both chambers of Florida’s legislature are dominated by Republicans, who are broadly expected to approve the proposed maps, which DeSantis would sign into law.

While the Florida maps introduced by DeSantis pre-empted the Supreme Court’s VRA ruling, the six Republican-appointed justices previously issued an unsigned order this week reinstating GOP-drawn congressional district maps in Texas. A three-judge panel had initially warned that the Texas maps, which would likely flip five House seats from blue to red, illegally discriminate along racial lines, issuing an injunction. The Supreme Court stayed the panel’s ruling in December and, after the lower court ruled definitively against the Texas maps, reversed the lower court’s ruling, agreeing that Texas was redrawing its congressional districts along partisan lines, not racial lines. Democrat-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The introduction of Florida’s proposed maps also follows the passage of a controversial constitutional amendment in Virginia, allowing the state’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly to bypass the state’s constitutionally-mandated non-partisan redistricting commission and redraw congressional district maps on its own. The planned maps would eliminate four Republican-held House seats and give Democrats 10 of the state’s 11 congressional delegation slots.

The referendum approved the Democrats’ power-grab by a narrow margin, but certification of the referendum was halted last week by the Tazewell County Circuit Court, which determined that Democrats in the General Assembly had violated the state legislature’s own rules in advancing the proposed amendment to the referendum stage. The Supreme Court of Virginia had previously overruled the Tazewell County Circuit Court’s prior order halting the redistricting process, but on Tuesday, the high court upheld the Tazewell County Circuit Court’s most recent ruling, rejecting a request from Democrats to allow certification of the referendum to proceed.