Virginia Democrats ask Supreme Court to revive House map for midterms

WASHINGTON – Virginia is the latest state to ask the Supreme Court for emergency help to change its congressional map before its fall elections.

The Democratic leaders of the state legislature asked the high court to intervene on May 11 after the state’s Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved measure last week, allowing lawmakers to create a map more favorable to Democrats.

The state court held that the new map was illegal because lawmakers failed to follow proper procedures in proposing an amendment to the state constitution.

Virginia Democrats asked the high court to put that ruling on hold.

"By forcing the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment the people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts," Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones wrote in a filing.

Democrats were relying on the redistricting effort to counter map changes in other states that favored Republicans.

The unusual election-year scramble to create new maps before the decennial Census mandates them began in Texas, when state lawmakers responded to a push from President Donald Trump to rearrange the map.

That effort was supercharged by the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision weakening Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

Louisiana, the state at the center of that decision, successfully asked the justices this month to expedite finalizing the decision to allow time for a new map to be drawn that favors Republicans.

And Alabama has a pending request before for the court seeking to clear the way for the state to use a map that eliminates a majority-Black district held by a Democrat.

In the latest request, Virginia argues that the state Supreme Court misread federal election law and also rejected the plain text of the state constitution’s definition of an election when blocking the new map.

“Either violation is sufficient for this Court to reverse the decision below,” the state’s Democrats wrote in their appeal.

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University who writes about the court on Substack, predicted Monday that such an appeal would be unlikely to persuade the Supreme Court to intervene.

The court asked the Republicans who challenged the new Virginia map to respond to Democrats' appeal by May 14.