Florida judge lets DeSantis-drawn mid-decade congressional map stand for 2026 elections

Leon County Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes -- a DeSantis appointee sitting in Tallahassee -- on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, denied motions for a preliminary injunction filed by Equal Ground, Common Cause Florida, the League of Women Voters of Florida, LULAC and other voting-rights plaintiffs challenging Florida's new mid-decade congressional map. The ruling leaves the Republican-friendly map drawn by Gov. Ron DeSantis's office and enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature in effect for the 2026 elections. Hawkes wrote that, on the present record, the challengers had not shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits and that with Florida's primary less than three months away, "the public interest weighs more in favor of certainty than a haphazard judicial mandate of discarded maps." He emphasized that denial of the preliminary injunction "does not preclude the entry of a final injunction at the conclusion of a trial on the merits."

The plaintiffs sued under Florida's Fair Districts Amendment, which voters added to the state constitution in 2010 and which forbids drawing districts with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent. DeSantis's general counsel told lawmakers the state did not have to abide by that ban, and the mapmaker who drew the new lines, Jason Poreda, has said he drew the map "not having to comply with the Fair Districts Amendment" and used "partisan data" for "every district." The redraw produces roughly 24 Republican-leaning seats out of Florida's 28 U.S. House districts -- a swing of about four seats from the previous map -- and is part of a Trump-pushed mid-decade redistricting drive across Republican-controlled states including Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and South Carolina (see related entries in The Standing's gerrymandering coverage).

Plaintiffs filed notices of appeal and have signaled they will exhaust all legal options; the case is widely expected to reach the Florida Supreme Court, where DeSantis appointed six of the seven sitting justices. The trial-court case continues toward a full trial on the merits while the new districts govern the 2026 cycle. This entry is a sequel to the unveiling and legislative-passage coverage flagged in the upstream monitoring issue.