Florida
Third-largest US state; DeSantis signed a 24R-4D congressional map on 4 May 2026, facing immediate Fair Districts challenge.
Florida's 24R-4D congressional map, targeting four Democratic incumbents, is locked in for November after the state Supreme Court deferred a Fair Districts challenge 6-1 on 10 June 2026, closing Democrats' last route to change it.
Last refreshed: 4 August 2026 · Appears in 2 active topics
Can Florida's Fair Districts constitutional amendment survive DeSantis's 24R-4D map in court?
Timeline for Florida
Mentioned in: Lakeland halts big power users, 4-3
Data Centres: Boom and BacklashMentioned in: Havana calls the threat framing a lie
Cuba DispatchMentioned in: Sabato moves three races for governor
US Midterms 2026Mentioned in: Fry and Norman run, keep House seats
US Midterms 2026Background
Florida is the United States' third-most populous state, with roughly 22 million residents and 30 seats in the House of Representatives, making it one of the largest prizes in national electoral maps. It is governed by Republican Ron DeSantis.
Its large Cuban-American and wider Hispanic population gives Florida outsized weight in US-Cuba policy; the state has anchored the most vocally anti-Cuba bloc in Congress since the 1990s. Florida voters also amended the state constitution in 2010 via the Fair Districts amendments, banning partisan gerrymanders at state level independent of federal voting-rights law.
That dual identity, a Republican-controlled statehouse operating under a voter-imposed anti-gerrymander clause, makes Florida a recurring test case for how FAR state legislatures can redraw congressional lines once federal Voting Rights Act constraints loosen, and how FAR a state's own electorate can constrain them in return.
Florida's map stays locked for November
Florida's redistricting session opened on 28 April 2026, with Governor Ron DeSantis awaiting the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais ruling before finalising districts targeting four Democratic incumbents, including Wasserman Schultz in Fort Lauderdale. The Senate passed the map 21-17 on 30 April, the House 83-28 the next day, and DeSantis signed it into law on 4 May.
Plaintiffs filed a Fair Districts challenge within hours, arguing the state's 2010 constitutional ban on partisan gerrymanders survives Callais untouched; a DeSantis-appointed judge upheld the map on 26 May, calling it 'the lesser of two evils'. Florida's own Supreme Court then deferred the constitutional question 6-1 on 10 June, leaving the map fixed for November with the underlying dispute unresolved.
Florida's delegation keeps pushing Cuba sanctions
Three of Florida's Republican House members anchor the state's Cuba hawks in Congress: their 11 February 2026 letter demanding a purge of Cuba trade licences went unanswered for 96 days before Executive Order 14404 gave the delegation a policy win to claim on 7 May.
That same Florida bloc, joined by a New Jersey colleague, pressed Secretary Rubio and Treasury Secretary Bessent on 10 July to sanction Cuba's overseas medical-mission programme as forced labour. An initial 13 July sanctions wave Left the operator untouched, but OFAC designated the programme's Central Unit for Medical Cooperation and Cuba's health minister on 23 July, handing the delegation the win it had asked for within two weeks.