#TalkRadio – December 2: The Battle Over Congressional Redistricting: Fighting For Democracy State By State!

Hi Igniters For Change! The Igniting Change Radio Show on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025, from 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Eastern Time, entitled “The Battle Over Congressional Redistricting: Fighting For Democracy State By State!”, will be live with Radio Show Co-Hosts and Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) Co-Leaders Attorneys Barbara Arnwine, Esq. and Daryl Jones, Esq. and will feature special guests Attorney Denise Lieberman, with the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition (MOVPC);  Yunior Rivas, Breaking News Journalist with Democracy Docket; Representative Angela Nixon, Florida House of Representatives; and, Larry Stafford, Jr., the Executive Director of Progressive Maryland.

Our show will be discussing Congressional Redistricting, specifically the Challenges to Redistricting in Maryland, Florida, Missouri, and redistricting crisis in North Carolina. Our expert guests are leaders from states with ongoing mid-decade redistricting fights and will lift up these crises and share any call-to-actions that people can engage in at this moment.

Mid‑decade congressional redistricting in these four states raises urgent voting‑rights questions about racial vote dilution, partisan gerrymandering, legal authority to redraw maps between censuses, and the practical risks of rushed processes that can disenfranchise communities.

In response to President Trump’s successful demands to the Texas Legislature, which created 5 more Republican seats at the expense of traditional African-American Congressional seats, like California, Maryland is considering pro-active counter-balancing redistricting to prevent this sabotage of the 2026 elections. Governor Wes Moore reconstituted a Redistricting Advisory Commission on November 4th, 2025 to gather public input and produce recommendations rather than immediately imposing a mid‑cycle map. A commission process uses public hearings, published proposals, and documented neutral criteria to build an evidentiary record. Maryland courts struck down an extreme partisan plan in 2022, so any mid‑decade effort will be scrutinized for intent, demographic effect, and administrative feasibility. The commission’s meeting schedule and the demographic analyses it compiles will be central if litigation follows. Well‑documented neutral criteria and robust public testimony can strengthen defensibility, but compressed timelines and partisan pressure still risk maps that invite rapid state‑court review (Petrowich, November 29th, 2025, NPR/WYPR via KRWG, https://www.krwg.org/npr-politics/2025-11-29/marylands-governor-proposes-redistricting-some-of-his-democratic-colleagues-oppose-it ; DePuyt, November 7th, 2025, Maryland Matters, https://marylandmatters.org/2025/11/07/mid-decade-redistricting-poses-more-risk-than-reward-ferguson-warns/ ).

Florida’s leadership called a special legislative session on December 1st, 2025 to revisit congressional lines. The House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting is holding a public meeting on December 4th, 2025 at 1:30 PM in Reed Hall in the House Office Building. Florida’s 2010 Fair Districts constitutional amendments bar maps drawn primarily for partisan gain. The compressed schedule of a special session, committee hearings, and rapid mapping creates narrow windows for public comment and technical review. Rushed processes can compress public‑comment windows, obscure demographic impacts, and increase the risk that enacted maps will have the effect of diluting minority opportunity. Any map adopted in this special session is likely to face immediate litigation under Florida’s state constitutional standards and under the Voting Rights Act if plaintiffs can show discriminatory intent or effect (Jaffe, December 1st, 2025, Floridian Press, https://floridianpress.com/2025/12/desantis-will-call-for-special-legislative-session-on-congressional-redistricting/ ). These new congressional maps being advanced follow numerous court challenges to the last round of redistricting. In July 2025, the Florida Supreme Court upheld Governor Ron DeSantis’ congressional maps that dismantled the state’s former 5th District, a majority‑Black district stretching from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. The court ruled that restoring the district would amount to impermissible racial gerrymandering, even though the effect of the new map was to scatter Black voters across several Republican‑held districts. Voting‑rights groups, including Black Voters Matter and the League of Women Voters of Florida, argued that the maps violated the Voting Rights Act and Florida’s Fair Districts constitutional amendments by diluting Black voter power and eliminating a district where African American communities had previously been able to elect their candidate of choice. The decision left Florida with a congressional delegation tilted 20–8 in favor of Republicans and reduced Black representation in North Florida (Changa, July 22nd, 2025, NewsOne, https://newsone.com/6325716/florida-supreme-court-backs-desantis-maps-diluting-black-power/ ; Anderson, July 17th, 2025, PBS News, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/florida-supreme-court-upholds-congressional-map-that-eliminates-a-majority-black-district ). With the special legislative session called on December 1st, 2025 and the Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting meeting on December 4th, 2025, advocates warn that the new maps will continue the same pattern of dismantling minority opportunity districts. Because the Florida Supreme Court has already upheld maps that eliminated a majority‑Black district, the concern is that further changes will deepen the dilution of African American voting power and entrench partisan advantage, despite the protections written into the Fair Districts amendments.

Missouri’s legislature enacted a new congressional map on September 28th, 2025 that reconfigured a Kansas City–area seat and split urban counties along historic dividing lines. Missouri’s September 28th, 2025 map dismantled the Kansas City–anchored district long represented by Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, a Black Democrat, by splitting Jackson County and dispersing Black voters into surrounding suburban and rural districts. This destruction of Cleaver’s district eliminated a key minority opportunity seat, raising claims that the plan unlawfully diluted Black voting strength in violation of the Voting Rights Act and Equal Protection standards (Halliburton & Moyer, November 28th, 2025, News‑Press Now/KMIZ, https://www.newspressnow.com/news/government/state-of-missouri-government/2025/11/28/judge-hears-arguments-in-lawsuit-to-block-missouris-new-congressional-map/ ; Hancock, September 15th, 2025, Missouri Independent, https://missouriindependent.com/2025/09/15/three-lawsuits-and-a-referendum-new-missouri-congressional-map-faces-multiple-attacks/). Opponents filed multiple lawsuits and launched a citizen referendum drive to suspend the law pending a public vote. One‑person, one‑vote requires substantially equal populations across districts. Compactness is a geometric measure intended to prevent oddly shaped districts. Opportunity districts are those where a racial or language minority has a realistic chance to elect its candidate of choice. The litigation raises state‑law questions about whether the legislature may lawfully redraw maps mid‑decade and whether the map violates state constitutional standards and the Voting Rights Act by reducing minority opportunity. Outcomes will depend on whether courts find unlawful racial effect or procedural overreach and on the timing of judicial rulings relative to signature‑gathering and certification deadlines (Rosenbaum, November 20th, 2025, St. Louis Public Radio/KCUR, https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2025-11-20/missouri-redistricting-texas-congressional-map ; KBIA Staff, November 18th, 2025, KBIA, https://www.kbia.org/missouri-news/2025-11-18/missouri-ag-argues-st-louis-congressional-district-is-an-unconstitutional-racial-gerrymander ).

North Carolina approved a mid‑decade congressional map on October 22nd, 2025 that reconfigured the 1st and neighboring districts in ways that legal challengers have alleged in a lawsuit were purposed to flip a Democratic seat by packing and cracking Black voters. Packing concentrates a group into fewer districts to waste votes. Cracking disperses a group across districts to prevent a majority. Plaintiffs sought emergency relief and alleged discriminatory intent and retaliatory motive tied to recent organizing. A three‑judge federal panel denied preliminary injunctions on November 26th, 2025 and allowed the map to be used while litigation over intent and effect proceeds. That outcome reflects the post‑Rucho v. Common Cause landscape in which federal courts may police race‑based claims under the Voting Rights Act but are prohibited in policing purely partisan gerrymanders, so plaintiffs must marshal strong evidence of discriminatory intent or demonstrable vote‑diluting effect to prevail (Richards, November 27th, 2025, NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/federal-court-allows-north-carolina-use-new-republican-drawn-map-2026-rcna246156 ; Howard, October 22nd, 2025, Politico, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/22/north-carolina-new-house-district-gop-gerrymander-00618225 ).

(Note: this summary and some of the guest bio’s were constructed and sourced with the help of AI, and extensively directed, researched, reviewed, refined, and then partially rewritten by TJC.)

Proposed Questions