The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to allow Virginia to implement a newly drawn congressional map that would have favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House districts. The decision, issued without explanation, leaves intact a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that had invalidated the voter-approved map.
Virginia voters approved the map in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Virginia Supreme Court, in a 4–3 decision, struck down the referendum and the resulting map on state constitutional grounds, finding that lawmakers had not followed required procedures to place the question on the ballot. That ruling nullified the Democratic-drawn plan that Democrats said would create four additional likely Democratic seats in the state’s congressional delegation.
Virginia Democrats and the state attorney general sought emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the voter-approved map to be used in upcoming elections. In their filing they argued the state high court had erred on significant federal-law issues and that its decision effectively overrode the will of the voters by forcing the state to use the districts the referendum rejected.
Republican state legislators urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to intervene, saying the dispute was a matter of state law and noting Democrats did not press federal claims in lower courts. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant the emergency application, leaving the Virginia Supreme Court’s nullification of the referendum in place.
The Virginia case is the latest in a string of high-profile redistricting emergency requests that the U.S. Supreme Court has handled this year. In recent months the court allowed Texas to use a GOP-favoring map, permitted a voter-approved California map that benefits Democrats, blocked a proposed redrawing in New York that could have flipped a Republican-held seat, and in April found a Louisiana map to be an unlawful racial gerrymander, ordering it to be redrawn. The Louisiana ruling sparked immediate redistricting activity in several states, particularly in the South, where legislatures moved to redraw long-established majority-Black and majority-Hispanic districts.
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to step in, the Virginia decision stands for now, likely preventing the immediate adoption of the more Democratic-leaning congressional plan and shaping the composition of the state’s congressional delegation in upcoming elections.