No matter how hard he tries, leftist lawyer Marc Elias can’t seem to stop losing in court.
The infamous Russia collusion hoaxer faced yet another legal humiliation on Tuesday when a Florida judge shot down his effort to block the Sunshine State’s new congressional map. Signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this month, the redistricted map looks to swing four U.S. House seats in Republicans’ favor during the upcoming 2026 midterms.
“Once again, we beat Marc Elias. Florida’s new congressional district maps stand,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote on X.
While not ruling on the merits of the case, state Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes, a DeSantis appointee, denied the Elias Law Group’s and other challengers’ “extraordinary and drastic” request to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the new map from going into effect.
The circuit judge notably determined that plaintiffs’ “evidence at this stage is insufficient to support the permissibility of this Court forcing the [state’s] 2022 map onto the electorate in contravention of the duly enacted 2026 map.” Should plaintiffs “prevail,” he wrote, “it seems the proper remedy is not for the Court to order a particular map, but for it to order the Legislature to redraw the map in a constitutional manner.”
That determination followed Hawkes’ analysis that Florida’s executive and legislative branches moved to redraw the map in “anticipation” of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which kneecapped states’ ability to engage in race-based redistricting. He observed that the “evidence” presented by Elias and Co. “focuses on challenging the constitutionality of the 2026 map, but does not sufficiently challenge the political branches’ finding that CD-20 in the 2022 map was drawn with impermissible racial intent.”
“It would seem presumptive on a limited evidentiary record and rushed proceedings to overturn both the Legislature’s 2026 map while also overturning their finding that the 2022 map is unconstitutional,” Hawkes wrote. “This is especially so where, if the Legislature and the Governor are correct that the 2022 map has racial classifications, Plaintiffs would have to provide this Court with sufficient evidence under strict scrutiny to justify the Court ordering its use again.”
The DeSantis appointee went on to explain the traditional factors judges take into account when deciding whether to grant a party’s request for a temporary injunction. He notably found that “there is insufficient evidence” to show that challengers enjoy a “substantial likelihood of success on the merits” of their claims, and that “the balance of hardships and the public interest weigh heavily against the issuance of an injunction.”
“The election machinery of the state is already underway. … Similar to the town election in Walker v. Best, it is more difficult for the much larger ship of statewide elections to change directions at this juncture,” Hawkes wrote. “The primary is less than three months away, and the general less than six months. The public interest weighs more in favor of certainty than a haphazard judicial mandate of discarded maps.”
Plaintiffs reportedly plan to appeal the ruling.
Tuesday’s decision is the latest in a string of legal defeats for Elias, who boasts a long history of waging legal warfare against common-sense election laws and related measures.
Despite his group’s best anti-election integrity efforts, the GOP and North Carolina election officials inked an agreement last week that stipulates the latter must follow state law by doing “more to keep noncitizens off the state’s voter rolls,” as The Federalist’s Matt Kittle reported. The consent judgment came weeks after a Louisiana court rejected the Elias Law Group’s attempt to force the Pelican State to hold elections under its unconstitutional congressional map.
Elias endured yet another loss in late March when a Wisconsin court denied his organization’s bid to nuke the state’s current congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms. Had the court ruled in his favor, it would have cleared the way for the drawing of a new map that would be friendlier to Democrats.
The Russia collusion hoaxer also saw a series of losses in the year prior, in which his legal challenges to Wyoming’s proof-of-citizenship law and Kansas’ ban on foreign funding of state ballot initiative campaigns went down in flames.
