The first agenda isn’t out yet for the House Congressional Redistricting Committee, but a second meeting is already on the calendar.
An interim meeting notice just went out for the second week of December, showing the high-profile committee will meet Dec. 10 from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in Reed Hall. That’s less than a week after a Dec. 4 meeting already announced by House leadership.
That signals that House leadership intends to have plenty to work on ahead of the 60-day Regular Session, which is set to run from Jan. 13 to March 13 this year. Speaker Daniel Perez announced in August the House will explore a mid-decade redistricting of Florida’s 28 congressional seats.
That followed a ruling from the Florida Supreme Court that upheld Florida’s current congressional lines, designed by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Office and signed by the Governor in 2022 after being passed in a Special Session. The ruling also called into question prior guidance on the preservation of districts where minority communities control the outcome of elections.
DeSantis has made clear he wants the Legislature to look at the maps again ahead of the 2026 Midterms.
But the Senate has taken no steps toward creating its own committee to explore redistricting. The Florida Constitution only requires lines to be redrawn after a decennial census.
Meanwhile, a number of other large states, both those controlled by Democrats and Republicans, have launched and completed mid-decade redistricting efforts already this year.
Most notably, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a new map in August that netted five more seats where Republican Donald Trump outperformed Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s Presidential Election. But a federal Judge this week blocked that map, a decision the state is appealing, according to The Texas Tribune.
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom in retaliation approved a map that could help Democrats pick up five seats in the Golden State, as reported by CalMatters. California voters in November approved Prop 50, allowing the new lines to go into effect. The Justice Department has sued to stop adoption of the map in the Democrat-led state, even as the White House demands other Republican states redraw their own lines.
While the Florida House continues to march forward with the redistricting process, it remains to be seen what new cartography would look like. No agenda has been published for the first redistricting committee meeting in December, and a notice is not required until Nov. 27, Thanksgiving Day.
The Florida Redistricting website utilized by the Legislature during its decennial redistricting in 2022 remains live, but it shows no proposed plans submitted after April 2022.