A Florida judge on Tuesday temporarily halted a request to block a new congressional map that favors Republicans, hours after a federal judge blocked a similar effort in Tennessee, Just The News reported.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis convened a special session last month and signed into law a Republican-friendly map after the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana's existing congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act by not adding another district where Black voters are the majority.

Florida Circuit Court Judge Joshua Hawkley denied a request from several groups to stop the use of the new map, which is designed to give Republicans more House seats in the November general election. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs had not sufficiently proven that the map was drawn with partisan intent and that it could not be changed so close to an election.

"The primary election is less than three months away, and the general election is less than six months away," Hawkley wrote in his ruling. "The public interest is better served by certainty than by an arbitrary judicial order to discard a map that has been haphazardly thrown together."

In contrast, just hours earlier, U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr. in Tennessee issued a temporary restraining order blocking Republicans from using a new congressional map in Tennessee until a three-judge panel could hear arguments in a lawsuit filed by several Black voters in Memphis.

Campbell ruled that the plaintiffs might be able to show that discrimination was a motive in drawing the new congressional map, but he expressed skepticism about the claim that Republicans had redrawn a majority-Black congressional district in retaliation for Black voters.

"While redistricting may clearly impede the plaintiffs' efforts to elect the candidate of their choice and may cause voter apathy, it is not clear that the retaliatory redistricting would prevent a person of ordinary firmness from exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association," the federal judge ruled.

In both cases, the plaintiffs are expected to appeal the rulings.

By Hong Sung-goo, Editor-in-Chief, NNP USA / Special Correspondent NNP info@newsandpost.com