by Natalia Mittelstadt
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday that he will convene a special legislative session for redistricting.
“Today, I announced that I will be convening a Special Session of the Legislature focused on redistricting to ensure that Florida’s congressional maps accurately reflect the population of our state,” he posted on X.
“Every Florida resident deserves to be represented fairly and constitutionally. This Special Session will take place after the regular legislative session, which will allow the Legislature to first focus on the pressing issues facing Floridians before devoting its full attention to congressional redistricting in April.”
The announcement comes after GOP-led states Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have already redrawn their congressional maps in an effort to give Republicans more seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Meanwhile, in November, California voters passed Proposition 50, a new congressional map that makes five more Democratic House seats possible, after Texas passed its own redistricting plan to help Republicans pick up five seats.
Texas and Missouri’s new congressional maps have faced legal challenges since their passage. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Texas, allowing the state to have elections using the new map.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sued the state over its new congressional map, citing a violation of Missourians’ right to referendum.
“By attempting to enact the new maps despite receiving more than 305,000 signatures from Missouri voters demanding a referendum, the Secretary of State is denying a longstanding tradition, judicial precedent, and our constitutional rights,” said Tori Schafer, director of policy and campaigns at the ACLU of Missouri. “For more than a century, the courts have upheld Missourians’ constitutional right to referendum, and we ask the courts to do the same with House Bill 1.”
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Natalia Mittelstadt is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
Photo “Governor Ron DeSantis” by Governor Ron DeSantis.
