Virginia\u2019s top court on Friday struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, dealing a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep pace with Republicans in the nation\u2019s redistricting battle.<\/p>\n
The ruling will wipe out four newly drawn Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts in Virginia, giving Republicans, who have carved out more red seats across the country, a structural advantage as they enter the midterm elections.<\/p>\n
For generations, congressional maps have been drawn once a decade, after the census, to account for population shifts. But last year, President Trump started a rare, middecade gerrymandering war when he persuaded Texas officials to draw a new map to help Republicans as they face midterm headwinds. California countered with a map favoring Democrats. Other red and blue states followed.<\/p>\n
After Virginia voters passed the map in a statewide referendum<\/a> late last month, Democrats thought that they had battled Republicans to a draw, or that they had even eked out a small advantage. Then a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court<\/a>, which further weakened the Voting Rights Act, prompted several Southern states to work to pass new maps that would favor Republicans.<\/p>\n Now, the rejection of the new Virginia map means that, across the country, Democrats stand to lose half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more, from redistricting alone.<\/p>\n Still, Republicans face a challenging political environment in their bid to retain control of their slim House majority. Mr. Trump\u2019s approval ratings have sagged as voters worry about the economy, the war with Iran and high gas prices.<\/p>\n In its 4-to-3 opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote that Democratic legislators had violated the state\u2019s constitution with their move to enact a new map meant to give their party 10 out of the state\u2019s 11 U.S. House seats, up from the six it currently controls. Virginia voters had approved a constitutional amendment to allow for the map in a referendum.<\/p>\n The problem, the court\u2019s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall\u2019s legislative elections \u2014 meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.<\/p>\n That, the justices wrote, violated the process laid out in the State Constitution.<\/p>\n \u201cThis constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,\u201d the majority wrote.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump and Republicans celebrated the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cHuge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,\u201d the president posted on his social media site.<\/p>\n Democrats seemed despondent over the decision; they had invested eight months and nearly $70 million to pass the referendum.<\/p>\n Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, said that \u201cthe decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.\u201d Mr. Jeffries had lobbied Virginia legislators to advance their redistricting push and then campaigned for the referendum.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWe are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.\u201d<\/p>\n Later on Friday, Virginia\u2019s Democratic legislative leaders signaled that they planned to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The State House speaker and leaders of the State Senate asked the Virginia Supreme Court to delay the implementation of its ruling until after an appeal was heard. <\/p>\n Some legal experts believe that the Virginia Supreme Court\u2019s ruling may be the final word on the state\u2019s maps before the election. That is because the case involved a challenge to a state law about whether lawmakers had followed rules laid out in the Virginia Constitution, not a question of federal law or the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, said in a statement that she was \u201cdisappointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia\u2019s ruling, but my focus as governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s ruling late last month, Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana have taken steps to draw new maps before the midterms. Those efforts could net Republicans a handful of additional safe seats before voters cast ballots in November. South Carolina is also exploring drawing a new map before November.<\/p>\n While Democrats have themselves grown more ruthless about gerrymandering, they are broadly struggling to keep up.<\/p>\n In part that is because, years ago, some Democratic-controlled states like Virginia installed independent commissions to oversee their map-drawing processes in an effort to insulate them from politics. But Republicans kept the cartographic power in state legislatures, allowing states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri to enact partisan maps with few logistical hurdles.<\/p>\n