Virginia’s highest court delivered a crushing blow to Democratic congressional ambitions on Friday, invalidating a redistricting plan that voters had approved just months earlier.
The state’s top justices determined that Democratic lawmakers broke constitutional procedures when they put the redistricting amendment before voters. Although citizens narrowly backed the measure on April 21, the court’s decision has now nullified that outcome entirely.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court declared in its written decision.
The invalidated redistricting scheme could have delivered Democrats up to four new congressional seats from Virginia, part of a broader strategy to counter Republican map-drawing efforts championed by former President Donald Trump across the nation. With this setback, combined with recent federal court decisions weakening voting rights protections, Republicans have gained a stronger position in the national redistricting battle ahead of November’s elections.
While congressional boundaries are normally redrawn every ten years following the census, Trump launched an unprecedented wave of mid-decade map changes last year by pushing Texas Republicans to redraw their districts for additional House seats to preserve their slim majority.
Other states have followed suit in this redistricting scramble. California has implemented new voter-backed districts favoring Democrats, while Utah’s supreme court imposed a congressional map also helping Democratic candidates. Conversely, Republicans are positioned to benefit from fresh House districts approved in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. Additional GOP gains could emerge following the Supreme Court’s voting rights decision, which has encouraged other Republican-controlled states to consider new maps before this year’s voting.
Virginia’s current House delegation includes six Democrats and five Republicans, all elected from court-imposed districts after a bipartisan redistricting panel couldn’t reach agreement following the 2020 census. The proposed Democratic map could have positioned the party to capture all but one of the state’s eleven congressional seats.
The Democratic design would have created five districts centered in northern Virginia’s Democratic stronghold, including one that stretched like a lobster claw to encompass Republican-leaning rural territory. Changes to four additional districts spanning Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads would have weakened conservative voting strength in those regions. A reconfigured western Virginia district would have combined three Democratic-friendly college communities to counterbalance other Republican voters.
Virginia’s Supreme Court consists of seven justices selected by the state legislature, which has shifted between Democratic, Republican and divided control in recent years. Legal scholars note the court lacks a clear ideological lean.
The legal challenge centered on the procedural steps lawmakers used to authorize the new districts, rather than questioning the maps themselves.
Since Virginia’s redistricting commission was created through a constitutional amendment approved by voters, legislators needed to propose another amendment to redraw the districts. This process required passing a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election occurring between them, before placing the amendment on the ballot.
Lawmakers first approved the amendment last October while early voting was already underway but before it ended on election day. The legislature’s second vote happened after the new session began in January. A separate February bill outlined the new districts, contingent on voter approval of the constitutional amendment.
Legal arguments centered on whether lawmakers’ initial amendment approval came too late, since early voting had already begun for the 2025 general election.
Defense attorney Matthew Seligman, representing the legislature, contended that “election” should be interpreted narrowly as referring only to the Tuesday general election date. Under this definition, he told judges, the legislature’s first redistricting vote occurred before the election and met constitutional requirements.
Plaintiff attorney Thomas McCarthy argued that “election” should encompass the entire voting period, which extends several weeks in Virginia. If correct, he told justices, then lawmakers’ initial redistricting endorsement violated the state constitution’s timing requirements.
In January, Circuit Judge Jack Hurley Jr. from rural Tazewell County in southwestern Virginia ruled that lawmakers violated their own procedures for adding the redistricting amendment to last fall’s special session. Hurley also determined that legislators failed to approve the amendment initially before public voting began in last year’s general election and didn’t publish the amendment three months before the election as legally required. He declared the amendment invalid and void.
The Virginia Supreme Court suspended Hurley’s ruling and permitted the redistricting vote to proceed while hearing arguments on the case.
