Democrats hoping for a late boost in Virginia's congressional map just hit a wall at the nation's highest court. The US Supreme Court on Friday declined an emergency request from Virginia Democratic lawmakers to restore voter-approved redistricting changes that could have yielded the party as many as four additional House seats, reports the Washington Post. The justices offered no explanation or vote count in their one-sentence order, with the AP reporting there was "no noted dissent." The New York Times notes that such brevity is typical in rulings like these.
The decision leaves in place a Virginia Supreme Court decision that voided the referendum as improperly placed on the ballot under the state constitution, calling it "null and void" in a 4-3 decision, per the Post. That restores the 2021 map, which currently produces six Democratic and five Republican seats. The state's attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the US Supreme Court's decision later on Friday, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law, per the AP. "Let's be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump's political gain," Jones said in a statement.
Virginia's Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, also slammed the decision, writing in a social media post that both the US Supreme Court and Virginia's own high court had chosen "to nullify an election and the votes of more than three million Virginians." The outcome marks another setback for Democrats amid a broader, high-stakes redistricting fight in which Republicans have recently gained an edge, helped by mid-decade map rewrites in GOP-led states and a US Supreme Court ruling last month that weakened the Voting Rights Act. Analysts say the cumulative effect could give Republicans roughly a dozen extra seats in November, per the Post.
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