OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
11:02 AM – Thursday, January 8, 2026
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis officially announced and issued a proclamation on Wednesday calling for a special legislative session in April focused on congressional redistricting.
“I will be convening a Special Session of the Legislature focused on redistricting to ensure that Florida’s congressional maps accurately reflect the population of our state. Every Florida resident deserves to be represented fairly and constitutionally,” DeSantis (R-Fla.) wrote on X Wednesday.
“This Special Session will take place after the regular legislative session, which will allow the Legislature to first focus on the pressing issues facing Floridians before devoting its full attention to congressional redistricting in April,” he clarified.
The governor said the session may take place between April 20th and 24th, right up against the April 24th deadline to file as a candidate for state office.
“We are going to do it in the later part of April, partially because there’s a Supreme Court decision that’s going to affect the validity of some of these districts nationwide, including some of the districts in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at an event on Wednesday, referring to an impending decision from the Supreme Court that could weaken the Voting Rights Act.
“Our population has changed so much in the last four or five years. We need to get apportioned properly and people deserve equal representation,” he added.
Florida is one of the most recent U.S. states to join the redistricting trend ahead of the midterm elections this year.
Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio’s new maps all seem to give the GOP an edge, with Florida likely following suit. California responded by pushing through Proposition 50 to override the independent, bipartisan commission that usually draws maps, giving the state five Democrat seats to cancel out Texas’ five additional Republican seats.
In Florida, the legislature — requiring passage in both the House and Senate — draws and enacts congressional redistricting plans as regular legislation, which are then subject to the governor’s approval or veto. Like most states with legislature-led congressional redistricting, the governor holds this veto authority.
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