Florida House leader calls for volunteers for redistricting committee

Yahoo

07-08-2025

TALLAHASSEE — Under mounting pressure from President Trump to get more Republicans elected to Congress, Florida House Speaker Danny Perez has taken the rare step of putting together a committee to look at redistricting.
The announcement comes the same day Trump said he wants Congress to conduct a mid-decade census that would exclude residents who are not in the country legally.
In a memo to House members Thursday, Perez, R-Miami, stopped short of calling for a special session on redistricting, saying the Legislature didn't have the time or resources. Instead, he said, he was looking for volunteers to sit on a special committee on redistricting that would convene in October when all the other interim legislative committees are set to begin hearings.
'As many of you are aware, there are national conversations ongoing in other states related to midterm redistricting,' Perez said, noting that a recent Florida Supreme Court ruling in the Black Voters Matter case raises questions about some of the provisions of the Fair Districts amendments voters overwhelmingly approved in 2010.
The approval of those amendments required lawmakers to draw political boundaries that aren't gerrymandered to keep themselves or their party in power or deprive minorities access to the candidates of their choice. And they must be as compact and contiguous as possible.
The amendments provided the legal grounds for Common Cause to sue the state over its 2012 congressional map and a subsequent map it was ordered to redraw, ultimately leading to the court approving a congressional map in 2015 drawn up by Common Cause and the League of Women Voters. That map was adopted in 2016.
In upholding DeSantis' 2022 map, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the federal rule against racial gerrymandering had sway over the state's Fair Districts amendments' non-diminishment clause about protecting minority districts.
'Exploring these questions now, at the mid-decade point, would potentially allow us to seek legal guidance from our supreme court without the uncertainty associated with deferring those questions until after the next decennial census and reapportionment,' Perez said.
Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, warned that redrawing 'Congressional maps outside of the standard post‑census cycle threatens fair representation, undermines the intent of our democratic system, and risks silencing our diverse communities.'
Perez said it was an unexpected opportunity, but the Legislature doesn't have the 'capacity to engage in the full redistricting process' as it did from 2020 through 2022.
'Thus, we will focus our inquiry on the Congressional map, which was the subject of the recent Florida Supreme Court case, and any relevant legal questions,' Perez said.
House members have until Aug. 15 to apply to the committee, whose members will be announced along with regular interim committee assignments in September, he said.
Anyone who has talked about running for Congress or made statements favoring or disfavoring a particular incumbent or political party, which is prohibited by Florida law, will be automatically be disqualified, he added.
Trump has already called on several GOP-controlled states to increase the number of Republican seats. Texas was the first state to hold a special session on redistricting to add three to five new Republican seats, a process that stalled when Democrat legislators left the state and prevented a quorum to vote on the new map.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has also said several times that he would like the Florida Legislature to convene a special session on redistricting, believing they could get an extra three to five Republican seats out of it.
Republicans gained four seats with the 2022 map drawn by DeSantis, giving them a 20-8 majority over Democrats.
Some political experts have warned such a move could backfire and create more narrow Republican-leaning swing seats than there are now, which could help Democrats regain some seats they lost with the current map.