Democrats ask the Supreme Court to halt a Virginia ruling blocking new
congressional districts
[May 12, 2026]
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and LINDSAY WHITEHURST
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on Monday filed an emergency appeal with the
U.S. Supreme Court seeking to halt a Virginia ruling invalidating a
ballot measure that would have given their party an additional four
winnable U.S. House seats.
The move came after the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a
constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.
The 4-3 state court decision found that the Democratic-controlled
legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the
ballot after early voting had begun in the Virginia's general election
last fall.
Democrats argued unsuccessfully that the U.S. Supreme Court has held
that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen
until Election Day itself.
The appeal is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting
competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump
urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was
supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the
Voting Rights Act.
“The Court overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by
ordering the Commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional
districts that the people rejected,” wrote lawyers for Virginia
Democrats and the state's Democratic Attorney General, Jay Jones. They
added, “The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of
Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate.”
The filing is a sign of Democratic desperation after the Virginia
decision deprived them of four winnable House seats in the mid-decade
redistricting race that President Donald Trump kicked off last year.
Democrats are still favorites to recapture the House of Representatives,
but their GOP rivals have claimed to have gained more than a dozen seats
through redistricting. The voter-approved Virginia map would have partly
offset that.
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Democrats are taking a legal long shot in asking the justices to
reverse the Virginia court's ruling. The Supreme Court tries to
avoid second-guessing state courts' interpretations of their own
constitutions. In 2023, it turned down a request by North Carolina
Republicans to overrule a state Supreme Court decision that blocked
the GOP's congressional map.
Politically, the appeal could help a party struggling to compete
with Republicans in the unusual mid-decade redrawing of
congressional boundaries by providing fodder for election-year
messaging about a partisan Supreme Court. The court recently allowed
Louisiana Republicans to proceed with redistricting after the
justices struck down a majority Black district as an
unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Democrats have been set on their heels because, days after the
Virginia ballot measure passed, the Supreme Court's conservatives
reversed decades of rulings and effectively neutered the Voting
Rights Act, paving the way for Southern states to eliminate some
majority Black districts and further pad Republican margins in
Congress.
The Virginia amendment had been launched long before that ruling. It
was intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri,
North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just
became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned
the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two
parties.
That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court's decision. The
justices are appointed by the legislature, which has flipped between
the two parties in recent decades, and the body is generally not
seen as having a clear ideological bent.
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Riccardi reported from Denver.
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