Virginia high court strikes down Democratic redistricting plan

WASHINGTON— In a blow to Democrats’ electoral hopes in this year’s midterm elections, the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down the redistricting plan that voters in the state approved last month.

The plan was expected to help Democrats win four additional congressional seats amid an escalating nationwide fight for control of Congress in which political leaders in many other states, including California, are redrawing their own legislative maps to gain political advantage.

The decision, reached on narrow grounds, prevents Virginia Democrats from using a redrawn map to their advantage in the November midterm elections, but does not prevent them from making a new push in future elections, experts said.

Just last week, a U.S. Supreme Court decision severely weakened the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial discrimination in voting; This sparked multiple efforts in Southern states to redraw legislative maps to the Republican advantage.

Friday’s Virginia decision, taken together with the Supreme Court decision, gives Republicans an overall advantage in the race, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center on Politics.

“They won the redistricting battle, not just in Virginia but across the country,” he said.

He said Democrats could still take control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but “we’re not talking about a landslide.”

Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief Cook Political ReportHe said Republicans gained a structural advantage through redistricting in November, but the political climate still favors Democrats.

He likens Republican efforts launched in Texas last year to building a levee before a storm.

“How high is this levee and is it strong enough to withstand a mid-level storm?” he said. “A high-level storm?”

President Trump, who launched the redistricting battle last year by pressuring Texas lawmakers to redraw their maps, welcomed the Virginia court’s decision.

“A great victory for the Republican Party and America in Virginia.” he wrote On the Truth Social platform. “The Virginia Supreme Court just struck down the Democrats’ terrible gerrymand. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Virginia Esq. Democratic Gen. Jay Jones, who defended the election process and results in court, said he was “considering every legal avenue forward to defend the will of the people” and accused the court of “putting politics ahead of the rule of law” in order to “reach the wrong legal conclusion that suits their political agenda.”

In its decision, the state supreme court ruled that the majority-Democratic state Legislature did not follow proper procedures in implementing a plan to replace existing legislative maps with new ones approved by the Legislature this year.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said in the X post that she was “disappointed” with the decision.

“More than three million Virginians cast their ballots in Virginia’s redistricting referendum, and a majority of Virginia voters voted against the President who said he was ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress in a tentative and responsive referendum. They made their voices heard,” Spanberger wrote of the April 21 vote.

The attempt to redraw Virginia’s maps in favor of Democrats followed a similar and successful effort in California.

After Texas, inspired by Trump, redrew its map to favor Republicans, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California would respond.

He then led California Democrats to a successful push to hold a special election last November on a single ballot measure (Proposition 50) that would amend the state Constitution to temporarily sideline the state’s independent redistricting committee and give state lawmakers the power to draw congressional maps for the next few years.

California voters overwhelmingly approved the plan, with 64% of more than 11 million votes cast in favor of it.

California Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature, immediately introduced maps designed to help the party win five additional seats in Congress, offsetting the five seats Republicans were expected to gain in Texas.

After the victory, Newsom praised California’s approach as the fairest possible: Giving voters the right to choose. And he called on Democratic leaders in other states, including Virginia, to take the same approach.

Before the special election, California Republicans asked the California Supreme Court to block the measure, arguing that it was implemented in a way that violated procedural rules governing the new legislation. The court rejected the request.

Republicans in the state and Trump’s lawyers later challenged the new map in federal court, arguing that it was a racist ploy to benefit Latinos and was therefore illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that appeal in February.

In an

“MAGA rigged the system” Newsom wrote.

Rebecca Green, a law professor and director of the Election Law Program at William & Mary Law School in Virginia, said the court there rejected the redistricting plan on narrow grounds based on a Virginia law to amend the state Constitution that does not apply in California.

He said that in Virginia, lawmakers must vote for a Constitutional amendment in two consecutive legislative terms, and an election must be held between them. But when Virginia lawmakers first approved redistricting language, that decision was supposed to begin early voting in the November election.

That prevents Virginia from changing its map to favor Democrats more in the upcoming midterm elections, Green said, but it doesn’t stop them from restarting the process, adhering more closely to the rules and changing the lines for future races.