Virginia’s top court throws out Democratic-backed US House map
By Joseph Axe
May 8 (Reuters) – Virginia’s high court on Friday unveiled a new election map designed to flip four Republican-held U.S. congressional seats to Democrats and give President Donald Trump’s party victory ahead of the November midterm elections.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Republican challenge, rejecting a Democratic-backed ballot measure approved by voters in April that restructured the state’s U.S.A. House districts for partisan advantage.
The decision could strengthen Republicans’ hopes of maintaining their majority in the US House of Representatives in the midterm elections. Democrats pursued the Virginia measure as part of a nationwide push to redraw the boundaries of U.S. territories that the Republican president launched last year.
In its decision, the Virginia court agreed with Republicans’ arguments that the state’s Democratic-majority legislature did not follow proper procedure in approving the referendum before it was submitted to voters. A day after the referendum, a district judge blocked the state from certifying the results and called the ballot language “patently misleading.”
The Virginia court’s decision adds to Republican momentum in the redistricting fight. The ruling comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision backed by a conservative majority that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and opened the door for Republican-led Southern states to break up Democratic-majority Black and majority Latino districts. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
Republican-controlled states such as Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee have already taken steps to draw new maps for the November elections, even postponing party primaries to give lawmakers time.
Trump last year forced Texas Republicans to tear up their electoral maps and draw new district lines targeting the five Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. After Texas did so, California Democrats reshuffled their state’s districts, targeting five Republican incumbents. Other states followed suit.
Virginia voters approved the Democratic-backed map by a margin of 51.7 percent to 48.3 percent in the April 21 special election, according to an Associated Press calculation. The referendum was the final step in a complex legislative maneuver to circumvent a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2020 that left redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.
If Virginia’s map is invalidated, Republicans could gain an advantage of up to 10 House seats nationwide, depending on the outcome of Republicans’ current redistricting efforts in Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee.
Republicans can only afford to lose two net seats in the November elections to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The process of redrawing maps, known as redistricting, usually occurs every ten years to reflect population changes as measured by a national census taken every 10 years. On the other hand, ongoing and recently completed redistricting efforts by Republican- and Democrat-held state legislatures have been motivated by a desire for partisan advantage.
The US Supreme Court’s decision has only accelerated the fight. In addition to states already trying to immediately reshape their maps, other states have made clear they plan to take a maximally partisan approach to redistricting ahead of the 2028 election.
Under Virginia state law, a proposed constitutional amendment must be approved by two consecutive legislatures, with a state election in between, 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 won additional legislative seats in that vote, passed the amendment a second time in January and scheduled the referendum for April.
Republicans have filed multiple lawsuits claiming there was no election interference because early voting had already begun when the amendment was first passed and lawmakers violated other procedural steps in advancing the measure.
(Reporting by Joseph Axe; Editing by Will Dunham)
