The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit refused to grant an injunction on Tuesday to the GOP’s newly enacted gerrymandered congressional map. The ruling comes after pro-voting groups argued there was “staggering” evidence that the map violates the state ban on partisan gerrymandering.

In his opinion denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes concluded that with Florida’s primary election less than three months away and the general election less than six months away, “the public interest weighs more in favor of certainty than a haphazard judicial mandate of discarded maps.”

Under the new map, Republicans are projected to gain 4 seats, creating a 24-4 split between Republicans and Democrats among Florida’s 28 US House seats. Tampa will be split three ways, and Tampa Bay could lose its lone Democratic representative. St. Petersburg would be split in two, with the southern half of the city included in a district that stretches south and east to capture rural DeSoto and Hardee counties.

The newly enacted congressional map is said to have disenfranchised the over 1.7 million Black voters and the over 3.3 million Hispanic voters who reside in Florida, as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) voters almost overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the map on May 5, shortly after the Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 decision regarding Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, where the court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, ruling that drawing districts to empower minority voters based on race constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The court shifted the standard for proving a Section 2 violation from “disparate impact” or showing that a voting map statistically dilutes minority votes to requiring proof of intentional racial discrimination.

Several other GOP-controlled states, including Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee, have raced to draw more extreme gerrymanders, with Tennessee recently making headlines for its map that eliminates the only Democratic-leaning district in Memphis.