Florida lawmakers take up DeSantis’ Congressional map in redistricting special session

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida lawmakers are back at work in Tallahassee to pass a map favored by Gov. Ron DeSantis to redraw Florida’s Congressional districts.

The session was also supposed to address DeSantis’ AI Bill of Rights and an expansion on vaccine exemptions, but House Speaker Daniel Perez said no bills were filed on those issues.

The Florida Senate, however, passed an AI Bill of Rights bill after gaveling in Monday.

The session is expected to last all week. Follow along for updates from the special session.

12:15 p.m.

The Florida Senate gaveled in and immediately took up the Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights, waiving it out of committee.

State Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Lake Mary, sponsored SB 2D. The bill mirrors the one that lawmakers tried to pass earlier this year. The bill passed 37-1.

Among the provisions in the bill:

• Requires a companion chatbot platform not allow minors to become an account holder or maintain an existing account without parent or guardian consent.
• Require chatbot platforms to remind account holders to take a break and that the companion chatbot is artificially generated and not human.
• The platform has to institute measures to prevent the chatbot from producing or sharing materials harmful to minors.
• AI technology companies are prohibited from selling or disclosing personal information of users.
• Prohibits the publishing, displaying or using for commercial or advertising purposes the name, portrait, photograph, image or other likeness of someone that was created through AI without express consent.
• Requires a framework for AI instructional tools used by educational entities.

The bill was not without opposition.

State Sen. Erin Grall, R-Fort Pierce, said the bill was not ready yet and more discussion was needed.

“I understand the desire to want to do something,” Grall said. “However, when we move to a parental, when we put a parental opt out in this bill, we are so permissive. We are so permissive with the way technology will aggressively attack our children in schools. We have lulled parents into believing that we are actually protecting when we are not."

Brodeur said this would not be the last time the issue was taken up in the legislature.

"I think this is going to be one of those things that we do every year as it continues to evolve, just like we do," Brodeur said.

The chances that the Florida House takes up the Senate bill, however, are very slim.

A bill to expand exemptions on vaccines in schools was temporarily postponed.

11:24 a.m.

House Speaker Daniel Perez told state representatives that his chamber would only be dealing with redistricting in the session since no bills were filed regarding an AI Bill of Rights or expanding vaccine exemptions, two other issues Gov. DeSantis wanted the legislature to take up.

Perez said lawmakers would vote on the map on Wednesday. A committee on redistricting is expected to meet at 12:05 p.m.

In response, DeSantis took to X.com to accuse Perez of “typical political shenanigans.”

The AI Bill of Rights, in particular, was a priority of the governor’s for the regular legislative session earlier this year, but Perez demurred on the issue, saying it should be handled at the federal level.

11 a.m.

What to know about redistricting

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office submitted a new congressional map to the Legislature on Monday that lawmakers are expected to pass, drastically altering several U.S. House districts in Central and South Florida.

DeSantis released the map to Fox News first on Monday before the plan was formally sent to the Legislature.

[INTERACTIVE: Slide the middle bar to see how the district map would change if approved]

In a memo to lawmakers, DeSantis’ general counsel, David Axelman, stated the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to knock down part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that allows districts to be drawn based on race to address historic discrimination. A ruling in a redistricting case out of Louisiana that was heard in October is still pending.

Florida voters, though, approved the Fair Districts amendments in 2010, which prohibit drawing districts to diminish the voting power of minorities or to favor a particular party. Because the Florida Supreme Court in 2025 struck down the part of the Fair District amendment (FDA) that allows districts to be drawn for racial reasons, Axelman claims all of the amendment should be null and void, allowing for partisan gerrymandering.

“The race-based requirements of the FDA also cannot be severed from the other requirements of the FDA. The FDA was sold to the voters as a package,” Axelman wrote. “There was no severability provision included in the FDA when it was presented to the voters. And because one part is unconstitutional, there’s little reason to think that voters would have approved the remaining parts by themselves.”

[WATCH: DeSantis unveils his Congressional redistricting map for Florida ahead of special session]

The Legislature might have a different view of the legal landscape. When DeSantis first called the special session in January he set the date for April 20, but earlier this month he pushed the start back by one week.

At the time Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, issued a memo to members reminding them of the state constitution’s prohibition against partisan gerrymandering.

“Florida’s Constitution includes strict guidelines for what information the Legislature can and cannot consider when drawing new congressional districts,” Albritton wrote. “Regardless of the forum or format, we can only consider thoughts and feedback in keeping with constitutional standards. Senators should take care to insulate themselves from partisan-funded organizations and other interests that may intentionally or unintentionally attempt to inappropriately influence redistricting."

Democratic lawmakers decried the new map as a blatant partisan power grab.

“The fact that the Governor shared his illegally rigged Congressional map with (Fox News) before sharing it with state senators voting on them TOMORROW shows how partisan and illegitimate this process is,” state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, posted on X.

The map was drawn by DeSantis staffers over the last week.

President Donald Trump kicked off a redistricting arms race when he pushed Republican-controlled states to redraw their maps ahead of the midterm elections. GOP-heavy Texas was the first state to do so, and Democrats in California responded. Some states, such as Indiana and Maryland, have rejected the mapmaking mania, but Virginia voters last week approved a new map tilted toward Democrats.

That left Florida as the potentially last chance for Republicans to slant the midterm landscape to their favor in hopes of salvaging their narrow advantage in the U.S. House. There are currently 217 Republicans, 212 Democrats, one independent and five vacancies in the chamber.

DeSantis has also pointed to a faulty 2020 census that added one more congressional district to Florida’s delegation, but DeSantis claims the state should have been given another. Also, Florida has added 2 million people since the 2020 census and the districts are now lopsided.

But Florida has had rampant growth in its recent history and hasn’t conducted mid-decade redistricting, and DeSantis hasn’t suggested redrawing the legislative districts, just the U.S. House districts.

The new maps, if passed and signed into law, are likely destined for the courts, but even with DeSantis having appointed six out of the seven members of the Florida Supreme Court, it’s unclear whether the new districts would get knocked down.

Under current precedent, courts have leaned on the Purcell principle, which holds that courts shouldn’t make changes to election laws close to an election. But unlike after a new census, Florida already has a district map upheld by the courts if the new map is struck down.

“In 2022, you needed a map. Florida had added a new congressional district, the old map was invalid,” Democratic redistricting consultant Mat Isbell said. “We have a valid map that we’re currently using.”