<\/p>\n
The congressional map approved this week by the Florida Legislature turns five left-leaning districts into three.<\/p>\n
Langston Taylor, Tampa Bay Times<\/p>\n
Source: Florida Senate<\/p>\n
When the architect of Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 new voting maps sat down to draw new congressional boundaries, he started with the goal of blowing up a majority Black district in South Florida.<\/p>\n
Jason Poreda, a staffer in the governor\u2019s office, told lawmakers this week that breaking up the Broward and Palm Beach district first created by a federal court in 1992 to ensure Black voters\u2019 representation in Congress was his top priority. The rest of the changes to Florida\u2019s district boundaries radiated from there, he said.<\/p>\n
DeSantis took a victory lap after the Legislature passed the new district maps<\/a>, celebrating Florida\u2019s newly drawn District 20, drawn with boundaries that should strengthen Republican control over more of South Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cAnother racial gerrymander bites the dust,\u201d he wrote on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n But while his office is touting the new maps as a \u201crace-nuetral\u201d correction, advocates for minority political power and Black candidates seeking office this November say the result is anything but.<\/p>\n Voting-rights groups say DeSantis\u2019 new maps, first published by Fox News showing a sea of Republican red across the state, don\u2019t just unfairly advantage the GOP, but also the white communities that make up the majority of the party\u2019s voter base.<\/p>\n Once the governor signs the maps into law, 86% of Florida\u2019s congressional districts will favor the GOP, even though just 41% of voters are registered Republicans \u2014 and 80% of those voters are white.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not race- neutral because what\u2019s behind that color red are white people,\u201d April England-Albright, the legal director of Black Voters Matter said. \u201cIt just means that white people have the majority power to determine who goes to Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n Packing and cracking South Florida voters<\/p>\n DeSantis\u2019 central focus on District 20 drives straight to a central question in this week\u2019s Supreme Court ruling on the federal Voting Rights Act: When does giving white majorities disproportional power count as racial gerrymandering?<\/p>\n Under Florida\u2019s newly passed map: the only two South Florida Democratic-leaning district seats held by Black representatives were redrawn in a way that makes all of the surrounding districts more competitive for Republicans, a method of map drawing that anti-gerrymandering advocates refer to as \u201cpacking\u201d and \u201ccracking\u201d minority communities to increase majority power.<\/p>\n Rep. Frederica Wilson\u2019s district, FL-24, is more concentrated with Black voters than before \u2014 \u201cpacking\u201d Black voters into the district and ensuring the surrounding districts have larger white majorities. Wilson declined to comment.<\/p>\n The seat formerly held by Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, FL-20, pulls neighborhoods previously in her district into surrounding white majority districts \u2014 \u201ccracking\u201d Black majority areas to weaken their collective voting power. Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n In the Orlando area, the new maps also \u201ccrack\u201d Hispanic-majority, primarily Puerto Rican neighborhoods into multiple surrounding Republican-leaning districts filled with white majorities, instead of being drawn together as they were in the previous map.<\/p>\n In South Florida, District 20 congressional candidate Luther Campbell said the new map does a disservice to Black voters in parts of Palm Beach County, such as Pahokee, Belle Glade and parts of Riviera Beach who were drawn out of District 20 and into white majority, Republican-leaning districts.<\/p>\n \u201cThey won\u2019t be represented by somebody familiar with their district and their needs and concerns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Elijah Manley, who is also running to represent the district, echoed those sentiments.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sends a message that their voices don\u2019t matter, and that the governor can silence their voices anytime he wishes, regardless of what people think.\u201d<\/p>\n He also gave a sharp warning on social media to white Democrats whose surrounding districts now favor Republicans and might be considering running in the newly drawn District 20.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me be more explicit: any white incumbent that attempts to carpetbag and run in the new CD-20 is a Jim Crow Democrat and will face united opposition from the black community.\u201d<\/p>\n For months, Cherfilus-McCormick has raised alarms about her district being at the center of Florida\u2019s redistricting effort. She was proven right this week.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest change because we are drawing this map in a race-neutral way: we did not recreate Congressional District 20,\u201d Poreda told a House committee about the district.<\/p>\n Poreda said he used partisan data to draw the new map, which cuts the number of Democratic favoring congressional seats in Florida, where there are 28 districts, from eight to four.<\/p>\n Florida is unique in that it has a voter-approved prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. But Florida\u2019s new voting maps hinge on a legal theory that DeSantis\u2019 office says undermines that ban.<\/p>\n His office\u2019s attorney David Axelman told lawmakers that if the Supreme Court bars considering race when drawing voting maps, the section of Florida\u2019s partisan gerrymandering ban mentioning racial discrimination is unconstitutional, and therefore the full ban is too.<\/p>\n This is likely to be a key point in the legal challenge voting-rights groups and Democrats have vowed to file once DeSantis signs the new maps into effect \u2014 particularly because the Supreme Court didn\u2019t ban the consideration of race entirely this week, but rather set a much higher bar for when it can be taken into account.<\/p>\n Genesis Robinson, executive director of nonpartisan voting nonprofit Equal Ground, whose mission is to build Black political power, said the Legislature\u2019s decision to pass the maps this week was a \u201cslap in the face\u201d to Florida voters and also ignores the state\u2019s own Fair Districts Amendment passed by 63% of voters.<\/p>\n He said the midyear redistricting in part erases the gains made in 1992, when the state elected its first three Black congressional representatives since Reconstruction.<\/p>\n The move came after Black Democrats aligned with white Republican legislators to convince a federal court to create three congressional districts to elect the state\u2019s first Black member of Congress since 1876.<\/p>\n A 1992 redrawn map resulted in three Black Democrats being elected to Congress at that time: Corrine Brown in Jacksonville, Alcee Hastings in Broward County and Carrie Meek in Miami-Dade County, and gave those communities minority representation at the federal level for the first time in history.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not something that we should be quiet about,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cOur democracy only works when everybody has a seat at the table and is able to participate by way of their vote, by way of their representation and by way of their voice.\u201d<\/p>\n Voting Rights Act questions<\/p>\n The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling<\/a> this week in Louisiana v. Callais determined that considering race at all in drawing maps can qualify as illegal racial gerrymandering, even if it\u2019s being considered as a remedy to racially discriminatory maps that dilute Black voters\u2019 power.<\/p>\n The Supreme Court\u2019s dissenters in this week\u2019s 6-3 ruling, authored by Justice Elena Kagan, said states can now argue they are drawing districts to favor parties \u2014 not white people \u2014 even if the impact is that white voters have disproportionate voting power.<\/p>\n The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was intended as a remedy to exactly the problem of the supposedly \u201crace-neutral\u201d laws that were disproportionately benefitting white voters.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the majority means is that if the State has used non-race-based criteria (whether political or non-political) to draw its districts, then Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] has nothing to say,\u201d Kagan wrote. \u201cEven though those criteria produce a world \u2026 in which minority voters, compared to their White neighbors, have \u2018less opportunity\u2019 to \u2018elect representatives of their choice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n England-Albright, the Black Voters Matter legal director, said the \u201crace-neutral\u201d maps Florida lawmakers are defending under the new ruling were built using the same logic of the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era that led to the Voting Rights Act\u2019s passage in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cJust like back in the day, you had all of these \u2018race-neutral laws\u2019 that did not mention race,\u201d she said. \u201cBut in application they were, with razor sharp precision, discriminating against Black people.\u201d<\/p>\n Claire Heddles<\/a><\/p>\n Miami Herald<\/p>\n Claire Heddles is the Miami Herald\u2019s senior political correspondent. She previously covered national politics and Congress from Washington, D.C at NOTUS. She\u2019s also worked as a public radio reporter covering local government and education in East Tennessee and Jacksonville, Florida.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n![\"From](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/MIA_105ICEBROWPRES02NEWPPP.JPG\" "\\"MIA_105ICEBROWPRES02NEWPPP.JPG\\"")
From left-Former Congresswoaan Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, talked to the press after visiting the I.C.E. Broward Transitional Center Following Death of Haitian Woman Detainee, in Pompano Beach, on Friday May 02, 2025. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com <\/p>\n![\"American](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/MIA_Uncle_Luke_MJO_1.JPG\" "\\"MIA_Uncle_Luke_MJO_1.JPG\\"")
American Rapper Luther Campbell, also known as Uncle Luke, talks during an interview at his home on Friday, Sept. 1, 2023, in Miramar, Fla. MATIAS J. OCNER mocner@miamiherald.com <\/p>\n Congressional candidate Elijah Manley Screengrab via Elijah Manley on Youtube Whose vote counts<\/p>\n
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