WASHINGTON (CN) - In a loss for Democrats, the Supreme Court on Friday denied a long-shot emergency appeal to reinstate Virginia's redistricting effort.
State lawmakers asked the justices to save a constitutional amendment permitting the redraw after a Virginia court nixed it. The maps would give Democrats four congressional seats in the midterm elections. Unlike redistricting moves netting Republicans additional seats in red states, Virginia's redraw was approved by more than 1.6 million voters.
Virginia Democrats said a state high court ruling striking down the maps amounted to "judicial defiance of the commonwealth's constitution." By using a "novel and manifestly atextual interpretation," they argued that the state court "overrode the will of the people."
Democrats began the two-year process in 2024 in response to Trump's call for Texas to add additional Republican seats. The proposed Virginia map dispersed slivers of Northern Virginia - a densely populated, wealthy and liberal region outside of Washington, D.C. - throughout the state.
Amid several lawsuits from national and state Republicans, Virginia's minority party challenged the amendment for a handful of reasons, including what they called procedural defects and the ballot question's partisan nature. Republicans filed the two primary challenges in rural Tazewell County, where a local judge ruled in their favor.
The high court's ruling hinged on the definition of the word election. Democrats in the General Assembly passed the amendment for the first time after nearly a million Virginians had already cast their ballots through early voting in the 2025 election.
Republicans successfully argued that early voting is part of an election - and therefore, that Democrats missed the opportunity to use the fall 2025 election. Democrats argued they met constitutional requirements because an election is defined as the day the votes are counted.
Siding with Republicans, the Virginia high court ruled an election included any time when a ballot might be cast. But Democrats say that's wrong - that early voting is only lawful because it does not expand the duration of the election itself.
Typically, the U.S. Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to review state court rulings based on state constitutions. But Democrats said the Virginia high court's ruling was interwoven with federal law because it touched on the definition of an election.
"The understanding of federal law on which the Virginia Supreme Court based its ruling was gravely mistaken," the lawmakers wrote. "It simply ignored the federal statutes that settle the question: 'The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election.'"
While state courts are given broad authority over interpretations of state law, Democrats said there are constraints on their authority. Three years ago, the Supreme Court held that state courts do not have free rein to invalidate congressional maps under state law in Moore v. Harper.
Source: Courthouse News Service
