TALLAHASSEE -- Florida Republicans will head into the fall elections with new maps almost exactly as they drew them, with the last remaining threat disappearing with a favorable ruling from federal judges.

A three-judge panel hearing Democratic challenges to spring's redistricting already had cleared state Senate and U.S. congressional maps, and late Tuesday gave its approval to the House's interim fix to a complaint registered by the U.S. Justice Department over a Collier-to-Broward state House seat.

"The legislature is to be congratulated for doing a great job," said state GOP Chairman Al Cardenas. "Without a doubt, the Republican legislature has validated the process."

The judges' three-page ruling does not spell out when the Florida Legislature must pass the modified plan drawn by House Speaker Tom Feeney and approved by the court. A more detailed ruling is expected later.

"All I know is I lost," said Thomasina Williams, lawyer for Democratic Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez. "I don't know why I lost, and I don't understand what's supposed to happen after this."

Williams had asked the judges to approve a plan that would have altered a dozen House seats in Collier, Miami-Dade and Broward counties -- putting 6,000 Collier County Hispanics back in a Hispanic-majority seat, while also swinging two House seats back to Democratic control. She argued that her plan strengthened black districts in Miami-Dade County that the Republicans had illegally weakened.

The judges, though, found no such problem with the House map and instead went with the House's own proposed solution because it changed only three districts to solve the problem pointed out by federal lawyers: districts 76, 101 and 112, in Collier, Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

In the new plan, District 76 extends farther down the Gulf Coast than the plan passed by the legislature in March; District 101 shifts northward but still extends from Broward to Collier; and District 112 shift southward and extends from Miami-Dade out into Collier to put many of that county's Hispanics back into a majority-Hispanic district.

The three districts would remain Republican, although District 101 would go from having supported President Bush by a 56-42 margin in the 2000 election to a 52-47 margin.