Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats’ redistricting plan in US

Virginia’s top court has thrown out a new electoral map that was crafted to flip four Republican-held US congressional seats to Democrats, handing President Donald Trump’s party a victory in the run-up to the November midterm elections.

The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorise the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment on April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.

“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion.

Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional US House seats under Virginia’s redrawn map, as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent US Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.

The ruling could bolster Republican hopes of keeping their majority in the US House in the midterms. Democrats pursued the Virginia measure as part of a nationwide battle over redrawing US district boundaries that the Republican president initiated last year.

In its ruling, the Virginia court agreed with Republican claims that the state’s Democratic-majority legislature did not follow proper procedure in approving the referendum before it was put to the voters. A day after the referendum, a county judge blocked the state from certifying the results, calling the ballot language “flagrantly misleading”.

Trump reacted to the decision on Truth Social, calling it a ‘huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia.”

“The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J TRUMP.”

Republican advantage

The Virginia court’s ruling adds to Republican momentum in the redistricting fight. It came on the heels of the US Supreme Court ruling, powered by its conservative majority, that eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

Already, Republican-controlled states, such as Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee, have taken steps towards drawing new maps in time for the November elections, even postponing party primary elections to give lawmakers time.

Trump last year pushed Texas Republicans to rip up their electoral map and draw new district lines targeting five Democratic US House incumbents. After Texas did so, California Democrats reconfigured their state’s districts, targeting five Republican incumbents. Other states have followed suit.

Virginia voters approved the Democratic-backed map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7 percent to 48.3 percent margin, according to an Associated Press tally. The referendum was the final step in a complicated legislative manoeuvre to sidestep a constitutional amendment, passed by voters in 2020, that had put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.

If Virginia’s map remains invalidated, Republicans could eventually gain an advantage in as many as 10 House seats nationwide, pending the outcome of current Republican redistricting efforts in Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee.

Republicans can afford to lose only two net seats in November’s elections to maintain control of the US House.

The process of redrawing maps, known as redistricting, generally occurs once per decade to reflect population changes as measured by the national census conducted every 10 years. The ongoing and recently completed redistricting efforts by Republican- and Democratic-held state legislatures, on the other hand, have been motivated by a desire for partisan advantage.

The US Supreme Court’s ruling only accelerated the fight. In addition to the states that are already seeking to reshape their maps immediately, other states have made clear they intend to pursue a maximally partisan approach to redistricting before the 2028 election.

Under Virginia state law, two consecutive legislatures – with a state election in between – must approve a proposed constitutional amendment before it can be put to a vote.

The Democratic legislative majority approved the amendment in October, days before the November state election. Democrats, who gained additional legislative seats in that vote, then passed the amendment for a second time in January and scheduled the referendum for April.

Republicans filed multiple lawsuits, claiming there was no intervening election since early voting had already started when the amendment was first passed and that lawmakers violated other procedural steps in advancing the measure.