Equal Ground asks court to block implementation of Florida’s new congressional map

Attorneys for a group challenging Florida’s new congressional map are calling on courts to immediately block implementation of new lines.

Counsel for the Equal Ground Education Fund say the map will likely be found unconstitutional because it violates the Fair Districts amendment in Florida’s Constitution. That organization was the first to file a lawsuit in Leon County circuit court challenging the cartography signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis this week.

Democratic lawyer Marc Elias’ law firm, which is representing Equal Ground, said it has filed a request for a temporary injunction regarding the map.

“There is no serious dispute that the 2026 Plan was drawn with the intent to favor the Republican Party and disfavor the Democratic Party,” reads a brief released by the firm.

The motion was filed along with a 63-page memo documenting “both direct and circumstantial evidence of partisan intent.”

Attorneys pointed at testimony to the Senate by Jason Poreda, when he acknowledged that partisan data was used to craft new congressional lines.

“Partisan or electoral performance data was considered, but certainly not at the exclusion of all of the other standards,” Poreda said.

That appeared to act contrary to prior direction from the Florida Supreme Court that forbids consideration of such data because of the Fair Districts amendment. That language was approved by voters in 2010 and bars the drawing of lines to favor a political party.

But Mohammad Jazil, an attorney for DeSantis’ Office, argued that because the Florida Supreme Court last year undercut provisions of the Fair Districts amendment restricting diminishment of the voting power of minority groups, the high court likely will toss the entire section of the state constitution.

Equal Ground’s counsel said that argument served only as a confession the mapmakers were actively ignoring the law.

“Plaintiffs’ expert analysis only confirms the extent to which Democratic voters were packed into a small number of districts and cracked across others, while disregarding political and geographic boundaries, in a textbook effort to dilute their votes,” the Equal Ground brief reads.

The motion also noted the average compactness for districts is less compact than the 2022 map the newly approved cartography replaces.

“Further, the 2026 Plan needlessly splits counties and cities across the state in ways that cannot be explained by adherence to the Fair Districts Amendment’s other criteria,” the brief states.

“This Court has authority to preserve the status quo by enjoining the 2026 Plan for upcoming elections and ordering the 2022 congressional plan remain in place pending a final determination on the merits.”

The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Lee Marsh, an appointee of Gov. Rick Scott who in 2023 briefly struck down the prior congressional map as unconstitutional. But his decision was ultimately overturned at the appellate level.