Jacob Ogles
What happens if Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoes congressional maps drafted by the Florida Legislature? It’s a prospect that increasingly demands attention since the Governor vowed he will not sign a map with an “unconstitutional gerrymander.”
What if DeSantis follows through?
First, bills can become law in Florida without the Governor’s signature. But the Governor indeed holds veto power on a congressional redistricting plan. If he rejects the maps, would that trigger a Special Session?
Sen. Ray Rodrigues, chair of the Senate Reapportionment Committee, said he’s meeting with counsel to discuss the process from here out. The House, which on Friday advanced two congressional maps out of a final committee stop, is expected to pass a plan off the floor this week. The maps are different from the Senate, which means the legislation will most likely end up in conference.
Chambers must come together on what to send to the Governor’s office.
But the prospect of a gubernatorial veto in the last days of the regular Session wasn’t exactly gamed out ahead of time, Rodrigues acknowledges.
Indeed, lawmakers started the process months ago aware that, unlike legislative maps that pass in a joint resolution and head directly to the Florida Supreme Court for review, any plan for Florida’s 28 congressional district’s boundaries lands on the Governor’s desk.
“Serving in the Legislature for 10 Sessions under two Governors, I’m always concerned about a veto on any bill we send to the Governor,” Rodrigues said. “Elected officials who don’t concern themselves with the possibility of vetoes can find themselves very disappointed at the end of the day.”
Would a veto trigger a Special Session? Not everyone thinks so.
The Florida Constitution makes clear in Article III that if the Legislature can’t approve a legal legislative map, the Governor can convene lawmakers within 30 days for a “special apportionment Session which shall not exceed thirty consecutive days.”
However, it’s clear that it relates only to maps of state Senate and House districts.
The only section of the constitution related to congressional reapportionment describes the Fair Districts provisions, which provide the language protecting racial and language minorities’ equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect Representatives of their choice.
There’s no authorization for the Governor to call a Special Session on congressional redistricting, much less if his reasoning is a rejection based on an argument the U.S. Constitution trumps the only direction given by the state constitution on congressional lines.
So could the Legislature simply ask the courts to step in and implement a legislatively approved map over the Governor’s concerns instead of reconvening?
Rodrigues said he doesn’t have answers to any of this to date. And before he can offer one, he wants to know the Senate Reapportionment Committee, Senate President, staff and counsel have appropriately weighed in.
But then, the Senate also worked aggressively to bring its portion of the redistricting process to a close early. The upper chamber passed a map on Jan. 20. Theoretically, suppose the House and Senate had come together quickly on cartography. In that case, a plan could have gone to the Governor and, in the worst-case, be vetoed and sent back to the Legislature well before the end of the Legislative Session.
But the House effectively paused its congressional redistricting process after DeSantis submitted his own congressional map and publicly raised questions about Florida’s 5th Congressional District, a Tallahassee-to-Jacksonville district now represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson. It wasn’t until the Florida Supreme Court declined to opine early on whether a map must have a district like CD 5 that the House held any vote on a congressional map.
Rep. Tom Leek, chair of the House Redistricting Committee, defended a brief suspension of the process last week for his committee-passed maps.
“We paused our process when the Governor voiced his opinion over the legal standards of our maps and requested an advisory opinion from the Supreme Court regarding CD 5, in which we joined,” Leek said. “Once the court chose not to opine on that request, we immediately resumed our process.”
The Legislature has maintained the need to protect a north Florida district where Black communities can elect a candidate of their choice.
The House ultimately moved forward with a map that does not have a Panhandle-spanning district. Nonetheless, it’s also not much like either submission that DeSantis’ office filed on the House Redistricting website and retains a heavily Black district in the Jacksonville area where Lawson — or another Black Democrat — would likely win the seat.
It also built a novel bill structure, one that includes one map (H 8017) without a narrow lateral district in North Florida as primary cartography, but also a second map (H 8015) that retains a similar shape to the existing CD 5, a fallback suggested to the court if judges demand a map that doesn’t diminish Black voting power in Lawson’s district by reshaping the seat.
Rodrigues called that a “novel concept.”
“I don’t think we’ve seen that done in redistricting, but given a tight timeline, it makes sense to go in with as much preparation as possible,” he said. Indeed, he added that he wouldn’t dismiss the bill structure out of hand.
But Rodrigues’ eyes now are on what comes out of the House. He doesn’t know if his committee will meet again or if any differences with the House will be ironed out in conference. Even the next step in the process remains difficult to forecast before the House finalizes and passes a map and related legislation for the Senate to review.
