> NYT: In Huge Blow to Democrats, Virginia Court Strikes Down House Map

FAFO, Dims!



Virginia’s top court on Friday struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, dealing a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep pace with Republicans in the nation’s redistricting battle.

The ruling will wipe out four newly drawn Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts in Virginia, giving Republicans, who have carved out more red seats across the country, a structural advantage as they enter the midterm elections.
Virginia’s new congressional map is struck down

The state’s old House districts are set to remain in place after a new map approved by voters was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court.

For generations, congressional maps have been drawn once a decade, after the census, to account for population shifts. But last year, President Trump started a rare, middecade gerrymandering war when he persuaded Texas officials to draw a new map to help Republicans as they face midterm headwinds. California countered with a map favoring Democrats. Other red and blue states followed.

After Virginia voters passed the map in a statewide referendum late last month, Democrats thought that they had battled Republicans to a draw, or that they had even eked out a small advantage. Then a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which further weakened the Voting Rights Act, prompted several Southern states to work to pass new maps that would favor Republicans.

Now, the rejection of the new Virginia map means that, across the country, Democrats stand to lose half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more, from redistricting alone.

Still, Republicans face a challenging political environment in their bid to retain control of their slim House majority. Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have sagged as voters worry about the economy, the war with Iran and high gas prices.

In its 4-to-3 opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote that Democratic legislators had violated the state’s constitution with their move to enact a new map meant to give their party 10 out of the state’s 11 U.S. House seats, up from the six it currently controls. Virginia voters had approved a constitutional amendment to allow for the map in a referendum.

The problem, the court’s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall’s legislative elections — meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.

That, the justices wrote, violated the process laid out in the State Constitution.

“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the majority wrote.

Mr. Trump and Republicans celebrated the decision.

“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” the president posted on his social media site.

Democrats seemed despondent over the decision; they had invested eight months and nearly $70 million to pass the referendum.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, said that “the decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.” Mr. Jeffries had lobbied Virginia legislators to advance their redistricting push and then campaigned for the referendum.

He added: “We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.”

Later on Friday, Virginia’s Democratic legislative leaders signaled that they planned to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The State House speaker and leaders of the State Senate asked the Virginia Supreme Court to delay the implementation of its ruling until after an appeal was heard.

Some legal experts believe that the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling may be the final word on the state’s maps before the election. That is because the case involved a challenge to a state law about whether lawmakers had followed rules laid out in the Virginia Constitution, not a question of federal law or the U.S. Constitution.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, said in a statement that she was “disappointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling, but my focus as governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling late last month, Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana have taken steps to draw new maps before the midterms. Those efforts could net Republicans a handful of additional safe seats before voters cast ballots in November. South Carolina is also exploring drawing a new map before November.

While Democrats have themselves grown more ruthless about gerrymandering, they are broadly struggling to keep up.

In part that is because, years ago, some Democratic-controlled states like Virginia installed independent commissions to oversee their map-drawing processes in an effort to insulate them from politics. But Republicans kept the cartographic power in state legislatures, allowing states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri to enact partisan maps with few logistical hurdles.

Virginia voters had narrowly approved the new map in a statewide referendum last month. Credit...Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press

In Virginia, voters approved the amendment to override the independent commission by about three percentage points after the General Assembly had passed it twice. But Republicans challenged nearly every aspect of the process. Most of these lawsuits were filed in a county court in the rural southwestern corner of the state where a judge repeatedly ruled in the Republicans’ favor. These rulings were appealed to the State Supreme Court.

In the lawsuits, Republicans argued that the language in the amendment was misleading, that the new districts were not drawn compactly, that it was improper to vote on redistricting at a legislative session that had convened to discuss budget issues and that a state law would have required county clerks to post notices about the amendment months before it was actually voted on.

One of the most critical questions was about the sequence of events in Virginia’s complex amendment process. Before voters weigh in on an amendment to the State Constitution, the General Assembly must approve it twice, with an election for the state’s House of Delegates taking place between the two votes. The first vote for this amendment was on Oct. 31, just days before the state election. With hundreds of thousands of Virginians having already voted, Republicans argued that the legislative action had come too late.

The court sided with that argument.

“Early Virginia voters unknowingly forfeited their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the Constitution by not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting,” the court’s majority wrote.

But Democrats’ loss in Virginia is likely to further stoke more redistricting battles. The party’s lawmakers in New York and Colorado have already signaled a desire to try to redraw their maps before the 2028 elections, and Virginia Democrats are likely to be in a similar position, since the court mainly took issue with the process, not with the resulting map.