DeSantis signs Florida map, Democrat lawyers file lawsuits to block it

Democrat-aligned legal heavyweights moved swiftly this week to block Florida’s congressional map after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the redistricting plan into law on Monday, setting up new high-stakes court fights following the Supreme Court’s landmark Voting Rights Act decision clearing the way for red states to reconfigure their lines.

Prominent election lawyer Marc Elias and vocal anti-Trump lawyer Norm Eisen were among those spearheading a trio of lawsuits challenging the map, designed to give Republicans four new seats on President Donald Trump’s home turf. Elias is best known for leading high-profile election lawsuits on behalf of Democrats, while Eisen led House Democrats’ first impeachment probe into Trump.

One conservative election expert said their new lawsuits might be successful in state court.

“If they can delay, even if they eventually get the injunction overturned, by then it’ll probably be too late for these new districts to be put in place,” Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, told Fox News Digital.

DESANTIS SIGNS FLORIDA REDISTRICTING MAP TO POTENTIALLY FLIP 4 HOUSE SEATS RED

The fast-moving litigation, brought in Leon County, alleges that the 24-4 map violated a unique provision of the state constitution called the Fair Districts Amendment, which bans partisan gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court’s decision involving Louisiana’s map found that congressional lines should not typically be drawn based on racial demographics. DeSantis has signaled that the decision bolstered Florida’s mid-cycle redistricting plan. The Democrat-led lawsuits in Florida, meanwhile, were unable to make race-based claims because of the high court ruling, von Spakovsky said, noting the legal challenges all rested on claims that the newly drawn districts were unfairly crafted to suit Republicans’ political needs.

“I think they’re going to have a battle royale in court,” von Spakovsky predicted.

“All of the different groups that filed these Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, all of them talk to each other, and they don’t work in isolation, and I can tell you, the reason they filed three different lawsuits is that they’re hoping they’ll get at least one of the three judges to issue an injunction, even if they ultimately lose the case,” von Spakovsky said. “The whole point of these lawsuits is to impose delay.”

Republicans are up against the clock to defend the map as Florida’s candidate qualifying period begins in early June, while the state’s congressional primaries are scheduled for Aug. 18.

A spokesperson for Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd told Fox News Digital the office could not comment on pending litigation.

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One of the lawsuits was brought by Eisen and others on behalf of voting rights groups including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters. Another was brought by Elias on behalf of the Equal Ground Education Fund and several individual Florida voters, and the third was brought by the Campaign Legal Center and the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

Florida is among several red, southern states hoping to rework their maps in time for the midterms. The stakes in Florida, an increasingly red state where Trump lives when not in D.C., are highest with four seats up for grabs, while Tennessee is aiming to break up its one Memphis-based majority-Black district and Alabama has only two Democratic-leaning districts.

When reached for comment, a spokesman for Elias pointed to his firm’s statement calling Florida’s map “one of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders ever recorded.”

“This new map would have one of the largest pro-Republican skews ever recorded,” the statement read, noting that Florida voters “sent a clear message” when they approved the state constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering in 2010.

The lawsuits in Florida also come against the backdrop of a broader pre-existing war over mid-cycle redistricting that began with California and Texas. The Supreme Court has greenlit both states’ maps, which gave five new seats to Democrats and Republicans, respectively.

In Virginia, Democrats secured a 10-1 advantage in a state that typically leans slightly blue. The state Supreme Court is now examining that map after Republicans alleged in multiple lawsuits that a ballot measure approving the map originated from an illegal special legislative session and that the ballot language was deceiving.

BLOCKBUSTER SUPREME COURT VOTING RIGHTS RULING IGNITES REDISTRICTING WAR ACROSS SOUTHERN STATES

Asked about his redistricting efforts and whether it was a coordinated effort to reverse DeSantis’ plan, Eisen told Fox News Digital DeSantis improperly leveraged the 6-3 Supreme Court decision. The high court’s decision came down on April 29, and DeSantis signed into law the state-legislature-approved map the following Monday, May 4.

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“Gov. DeSantis has used the excuse of [Louisiana v. Callais], really within hours of that decision coming down from the Roberts court, to do a plainly partisan redistricting in Florida,” Eisen said. “We and the coalition of civil rights and democracy groups and clients have filed a lawsuit to stop that. We cannot see the Callais decision, which itself is wrong, being further abused to drive additional illegal behavior.”

DeSantis told Fox & Friends the Supreme Court ruling supported Florida’s new congressional lines both because they dismantled an illegal racial gerrymander and because they reflected population growth.

“We actually had a racial gerrymander that the Supreme Court just said is unconstitutional,” DeSantis said. “I knew that was going to happen, so we called the special session back in January for April. … The other thing is, the Florida today is not the same Florida of 2020. We’ve netted two million people. … It does reflect that we have had explosive growth in parts of our state.”

Fox News Digital reached out to DeSantis’ office for comment, as well as lawyers for the Campaign Legal Center.