The Virginia Supreme Court has struck down a Democrat-inspired gerrymandered congressional map that would have given the party four of the five seats currently held by Republicans in a state that is about as evenly divided as any in the country.
“On March 6, 2026, the General Assembly of Virginia submitted to Virginia voters a proposed constitutional amendment that authorizes partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts in the Commonwealth. We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” said the 4-3 ruling.
“Virginians voted by a wide margin” in 2020 “to reform the redistricting process in the Commonwealth in an effort to end partisan gerrymandering,” the ruling continued. “They adopted Article II, Section 6-A of the Constitution of Virginia to create the Virginia Redistricting Commission. Under the 2020 amendment, if this bipartisan commission could not reach a consensus, the responsibility to achieve the amendment’s ultimate goal — ridding political partisanship as much as possible from the redistricting task — would become the constitutional responsibility of the Supreme Court of Virginia.”
“In 2021, partisan disputes in the Virginia Redistricting Commission deadlocked the 16-member commission. When the task fell to us pursuant to Article II, Section 6-A, we unanimously ordered that the prior district maps be replaced with wholly new maps that commentators across a wide spectrum of political views later deemed to be free of partisan bias,” the ruling noted further.
The court said that the Democrat majority in the state legislature earlier this year then decided to put a new politically gerrymandered map to a vote of the people.
The amendment narrowly passed with barely 50 percent of the vote for and about 47.8 percent against.
“Under the proposed new map, approximately 47% of Virginians that voted for representatives of one of the major political parties in the last congressional election would now be represented by 9% of Virginia’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives — while the approximately 51% of Virginians that voted for the other major political party would now be represented by 91% of Virginia’s congressional delegation,” the court wrote.
MAJOR WIN FOR REPUBLICANS: The Virginia Supreme Court has blocked Virginia’s redistricting referendum, likely preserving the current congressional map and denying Democrats one of their biggest redistricting opportunities of the cycle.
— VoteHub (@VoteHub) May 8, 2026
🚨 HOLY CRAP! In striking down Democrats’ 10D-1R Virginia Congressional map, the State Supreme Court RIPS Spanberger and her team of cheaters
“This constitutional violation incurably TAINTS the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.” 🔥
BRUTAL.
“We hold… https://t.co/vJkebCBPTe pic.twitter.com/aJBGvgV8KS
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 8, 2026
The ruling was one of the most closely watched this election cycle, and it comes amid efforts by other states to successfully gerrymander their congressional maps. So far, Republican-led states have the upper hand in the redistricting battle, with Florida adding 4 GOP-controlled seats last week and Texas adding five earlier this year.
Democrat-aligned groups immediately sued Florida; the Texas map, however, has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Other states like Missouri and North Carolina have added one GOP seat apiece.
In Virginia, “the new map would have been in effect for the November midterms and was expected to shift the state’s congressional split from 6-5 favoring Democrats to 10-1,” Axios reported.
Virginia law mandates that amendments must pass through two General Assembly sessions: one prior to the House elections (which took place last November) and one afterward. Republicans have argued that lawmakers improperly advanced the amendment after early voting had already started. In contrast, Democrats contend that an “election” refers to a single day in November. However, some justices seemed doubtful of this interpretation, especially since Democrats in Virginia and other states have implemented extensive early voting measures for several years.
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