Virginia’s Supreme Court said Friday that a statewide referendum can proceed on April 21 on whether to authorize mid-decade congressional redistricting, even as the state’s top court weighs whether a lower-court ruling invalidating the plan should stand. The decision keeps the election process moving during the appeal rather than pausing it entirely, according to the Supreme Court’s schedule for further briefs and any later arguments.
The dispute centers on the process Virginia Democrats are using to try to revise congressional district lines before the next standard redistricting cycle. Democrats are backing a revised map they say could help them win up to 10 U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterms, a boost from Virginia’s current Democratic position of holding six of the state’s 11 seats, the Associated Press reported.
The referendum is the next step in a two-step constitutional process that, if approved, would temporarily alter how redistricting decisions are made. The parties say voters would need to authorize a change that places redistricting authority with the General Assembly instead of a bipartisan commission, but only after the General Assembly adopts a constitutional amendment through the required steps.
In the months leading up to Friday’s ruling, a Tazewell Circuit Court judge rejected the amendment and set off the appeal now before the Virginia Supreme Court. Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. struck down the General Assembly’s actions on three grounds, including findings that lawmakers did not follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session.
Hurley also ruled that the General Assembly’s initial vote on the amendment did not occur before voters began casting ballots in Virginia’s general election last year, meaning lawmakers’ actions did not count toward the two-step process. He further found the state failed to publish the amendment three months before that election, as Virginia law requires, and concluded the amendment was invalid and void.
Democrats appealed Hurley’s decision, and the Virginia Supreme Court said it would consider the case. The Supreme Court also made clear that the timing it chose for the case did not prevent a narrowly tailored injunction from the lower court from being in effect while the referendum proceeds, leaving open the possibility that the April vote could be overtaken by the courts’ final ruling later in the legal process.
In its Friday decision, the Virginia Supreme Court directed initial briefs to be filed by March 23 and set the last round of court filings for April 23, with oral arguments scheduled for later if they occur. Democrats celebrated the decision to let the referendum go forward, the AP reported, but the ruling also raised the prospect that the approval question might ultimately be moot if the Supreme Court later upholds the lower court’s finding that the mid-decade amendment is invalid.
The Virginia fight is part of a larger national remapping battle that has already played out in several states ahead of the November election. The AP reported that Republicans believe they have produced nine more seats they can win in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, while Democrats believe they can win six additional seats in California and Utah.
Virginia Democrats have hoped to make up that three-seat margin in the state, after Republican President Donald Trump urged redistricting efforts in other places. But the legal timeline in Virginia could mean the courts’ eventual decision determines whether the state’s voters’ mid-decade redistricting authorization leads to new districts or is rendered invalid by the outcome of the appeal.