Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats’ mid-decade House maps

Virginia’s Democratic-led plan to redraw U.S. House districts in the middle of the decade was upended Friday when the state Supreme Court ruled the process used to authorize it was unconstitutional, a decision Republicans cast as a political boost ahead of the November midterm elections.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court said the Virginia General Assembly violated procedural requirements when it submitted a constitutional amendment to voters to allow mid-decade redistricting. The amendment was narrowly approved by voters on April 21, but the court’s majority said the vote cannot validate the plan because the amendment was put on the ballot in a manner it found improper.

Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey said the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner,” according to the court opinion as reported by the Associated Press. Kelsey wrote that the violation “irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void.”

The decision immediately reshaped the political landscape for Virginia’s House races. Democrats had said the new map could add as many as four additional U.S. House seats for their party, seeking to offset Republican redistricting elsewhere that was done after President Donald Trump encouraged state-level actions.

After the ruling, Virginia Democrats said they intended to file an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. The AP described the move as a legal longshot because the U.S. Supreme Court often avoids second-guessing state courts’ interpretations of their own constitutions.

Republicans celebrated the ruling. In a statement, Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the decision was another sign of GOP momentum heading into the midterms, adding, “We’re on offense, and we’re going to win,” the AP reported. Donald Trump also posted on social media describing it as a “Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” according to the report.

Democrats disputed the court’s conclusion and argued it overturned the electorate’s will. Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said Democrats respect the court’s opinion but lamented that it overturned what he said voters intended—quoting him as saying voters “voted YES because they wanted to fight back against the Trump power grab.” Suzan DelBene, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, criticized the majority, saying it “cast aside the will of the voters,” while also adding in a statement that voters would have the final say in November.

The redistricting battle unfolded amid a broader national environment in which Republicans have pushed for additional opportunities to redraw districts between census cycles. Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after the census, but Trump encouraged mid-decade redistricting actions by Republicans in other states last year, a sequence that set off new rounds of court challenges across multiple jurisdictions.

In Virginia, the state’s current House delegation is split between six Democrats and five Republicans, all elected from districts imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map following the 2020 census. The Democrats’ mid-decade proposal, according to the AP report, focused on changes that would have anchored five districts in northern Virginia and revised other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads, with additional adjustments in parts of western Virginia.

The court case, the AP said, focused less on the shapes of the districts than on whether the legislature followed the required process to get the constitutional amendment on the ballot. Because the redistricting commission was created by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose a new amendment to redraw the districts, which required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election occurring between votes.

Arguments centered on how to define “election” for that procedural sequence. Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued the term should be defined narrowly as the Tuesday of the general election, which he said meant the first vote occurred before the election and was therefore constitutional. Thomas McCarthy, an attorney for the plaintiffs, argued the term should cover the entire period during which voters can cast ballots, lasting several weeks in Virginia; under that interpretation, he said the first vote came too late.

In the majority’s view, the plaintiffs’ reading prevailed. The AP reported the court wrote that the General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election, and said that by the time lawmakers initially endorsed the amendment, voters had already cast more than 1.3 million ballots, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast.

A dissent by Chief Justice Cleo Powell argued the election for the purpose of considering the amendment should not include early voting. Powell wrote that the majority’s definition creates an “infinite voting loop” without a beginning, with what she described as a definitive end only on “Election Day.” The dissent signaled disagreement with the majority’s view of how the state constitution required lawmakers to time the amendment ballot process.