A Virginia court struck down a redistricting voting map in a major blow to Democrats

Virginia’s highest court on Friday threw out a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep up with Republicans in the state’s redistricting battle.

The decision will wipe out four newly-held Democratic-leaning US House districts in Virginia and mean Republicans will head into the midterm elections with a structural advantage in their plans to carve out more red states across the country.

Congressional maps are drawn for generations once every ten years, after the census, to account for population changes. But last year, President Trump launched an unusual, decade-long campaign when he urged Texas officials to draw a new map to help Republicans face midterm storms. California contested the map in favor of the Democrats. Other red and green states followed.

After Virginia’s map passed a statewide poll late last month, Democrats thought they were fighting Republicans for points, or even a slim chance. Then the US Supreme Court ruling encouraged several Southern states to work to pass new maps, which would favor Republicans.

Now, the rejection of Virginia’s new map means that across the country, Democrats will lose half a dozen safe seats, and maybe more, to redistricting alone.

Still, Republicans face a challenging political environment in their bid to control their slim majority in the House, including worries about the economy, an unpopular war with Iran, high gas prices and Mr. Trump’s declining approval ratings.

In its 4-to-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Democratic lawmakers violated the state constitution with their move to create a new map intended to give their party 10 of the 11 seats in the US House, up from the six they currently control. Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow the map in the referendum.

The problem, the court majority pointed out, is that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would have authorized Democrats to redraw the map, took place days before last year’s legislative elections — meaning 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 Federal Constitution’s due process.

“This constitutional violation irreparably taints the referendum vote and nullifies its legal validity,” the majority wrote.

Mr. Trump and Republicans celebrated the decision.

“The Republican Party, and America, won big in Virginia,” the president wrote on his social media account.

Democrats appeared dismayed by the decision after eight months and nearly $70 million spent on the referendum.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, who urged Virginia lawmakers to step up their pressure and campaign for the referendum, said “the decision to cancel the entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic act that will not stand.”

He added: “We are looking at all ways to overturn this shocking decision.”

What those options are was not clear after the decision.

Some legal experts believe the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision could be the final word on state maps before the election. That’s because the case involved a state law challenge about whether state lawmakers had followed laws set forth in the Virginia Constitution, not a question of federal law or the US Constitution.

Since the US Supreme Court’s decision late last month that weakened the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana have taken steps to draw new maps ahead of the stipulations. Those efforts could get Republicans a few more safe seats before voters go to the polls in November. South Carolina and Mississippi are also testing new maps before November.

While the Democrats themselves have grown ruthless about racism, they are fighting hard to keep up.

That’s partly because over the years, some Democratic-controlled states like Virginia installed independent commissions to oversee their mapping process in an effort to depoliticize it. But Republicans retain control of state legislatures, allowing states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri to create compact maps with fewer planning hurdles.

In Virginia, voters approved an amendment to eliminate the independent commission by about three percent after the General Assembly passed it twice. But Republicans have challenged nearly every aspect of the process. Most of these cases were filed in the district court in the southwest corner of the state, where the judge ruled in favor of the Republicans repeatedly. These decisions were appealed to the Federal Supreme Court.

In the lawsuits, Republicans argued that the language in the amendment was misleading, that the new districts were not consolidated, that it was improper to vote on the redistricting in a legislative session that met to discuss budget matters and that state law required county clerks to post notices about the amendment months before the vote.

One of the most important questions concerned the chronology of Virginia’s complex amendment process. Before voters can vote on an amendment to the State Constitution, the General Assembly must approve it twice, with an election for the House of Representatives between the two votes. The first vote on this amendment was on October 31, a few days before the national election. With hundreds of thousands of Virginians already voting, Republicans say the legislation came too late.

The court agreed with that argument.

“Virginia’s early voters unknowingly lost their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates for or against a constitutional amendment by not waiting for a legislative vote on the constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting,” the court majority wrote in its decision.

But the Democrats’ loss in Virginia is likely to fuel the redistricting battles. Already, the party’s lawyers in New York and Colorado have signed a desire to try to redraw their maps before the 2028 election, and Virginia Democrats may be in the same situation, since the court was more against the process, not the resulting map.

Abbie VanSickle reporting contributed.