Leon County Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes, a Ron DeSantis appointee, ruled on the same Tuesday to keep Florida's 24R-4D congressional map operative while three state lawsuits proceed1. The map draws 24 Republican-leaning districts against only four Democratic-leaning ones in a state with 30 congressional seats. Hawkes explicitly acknowledged the map's "potential partisan intent" but called it "the lesser of two evils" compared to Equal Protection concerns, and wrote that the challenge was "more geared toward the 2028 or 2030 election cycles than the 2026 election cycle"2. Common Cause and Equal Ground Education Fund, both plaintiffs under Florida's Fair Districts constitutional amendments, filed notices of appeal immediately; no stay is in effect, and Florida's congressional qualifying deadline, set for early June, proceeds under the DeSantis-signed map.
The Hawkes ruling closed a legal track that began when plaintiffs filed the first Fair Districts challenge within hours of DeSantis signing the map in early May. Hawkes had consolidated those challenges and heard full argument on 15 and 16 May. His ruling now routes the litigation to an appellate calendar that, by his own language, cannot change a single 2026 race. The Fair Districts amendments bar partisan intent explicitly; calling that intent the lesser evil rather than a disqualifying factor is a doctrinal departure from the plain text of the 2010 constitutional provisions, giving the appellate track substantive footing. It just runs on the wrong timeline.
On the same day, Virginia's candidate filing deadline passed under the original congressional map. The Supreme Court of Virginia had already struck down the 21 April redistricting referendum by a one-vote majority earlier in May, voiding a 50.7 to 49.3 popular vote on procedural grounds, ensuring candidates would lock to lines left intact by that ruling. With Virginia closed, every Democratic redistricting track for 2026 was gone: Maryland by Senate-president veto, Virginia by that same one-vote court ruling, New York and California confirmed foreclosed in the prior fortnight. The full redistricting sequence runs from the Louisiana v. Callais ruling that removed the Voting Rights Act's majority-minority district mandate, through Florida's signing and Tennessee's signed map, to this day. Democrats must now clear a 12-15 seat Republican structural map advantage through votes alone before they win a net House seat.
