Virginia asks Supreme Court to restore map in House redistricting fight

Virginia’s bid to revive a voter-approved congressional map collapsed at the Supreme Court, leaving in place a ruling that preserves the state’s 2021 lines and strengthens Republicans’ odds in a House fight that could turn on only a few seats.

Attorney General Jay Jones filed the emergency request on May 11, asking Chief Justice John Roberts to let Virginia implement a redistricting plan approved by voters on April 21 by 51.7% to 48.3%. The map was designed to give Democrats a chance to flip as many as four Republican-held U.S. House seats in a state where Democrats already hold six of the 11 congressional districts. Roberts, who handles emergency applications from Virginia, asked the Republican challengers to respond by Thursday, May 15, at 5 p.m.

The justices rejected the appeal on May 15 without public dissents. That left standing the Virginia Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling from May 8, which said Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedure when they rushed the referendum through the General Assembly and that the state had to use its 2021 congressional map instead.

The case carried a striking legal irony. In trying to salvage the new map, Virginia Democrats leaned on a theory long associated with Trump-era election litigation, arguing that the state court’s definition of “election” conflicted with federal law and with the Trump administration’s position in a pending Supreme Court case. They also argued that the Virginia court had effectively taken legislative power away from elected lawmakers. In other words, Democrats were asking the nation’s highest court to apply a doctrine often used by conservatives to curb state-court oversight of elections, a legal boomerang that underscored how high the stakes have become in the fight over House control.

The dispute arrived amid a broader mid-decade redistricting scramble, sharpened by the Supreme Court’s recent decision narrowing the Voting Rights Act and by Republican efforts in other states to redraw maps for partisan advantage. AP’s election analysis put Virginia’s voting-age population at about 6.4 million, a reminder of how much a single state can matter when the House is this closely divided.

Donald Trump called the Virginia ruling a “huge win for the Republican Party.” Hakeem Jeffries called it undemocratic and said it ignored the will of millions of voters. Marcia S. Price, the Virginia delegate who helped drive the redistricting push, said Democrats would now have to work even harder to turn out voters under the old map. Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics said the ruling clearly improved Republicans’ chances of keeping the House.