Virginia Supreme Court voids 4-seat redistricting referendum

The virginia supreme court struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan on Friday, voiding the referendum that would have authorized mid-decade map changes. The court said the legislature failed to follow the required procedure when it put the amendment on the ballot.

Its ruling ends the immediate path for a new congressional map that Democrats said could have improved their chances in as many as four of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House seats. Virginia now has six Democrats and five Republicans in the House, all elected from districts imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed after the 2020 census.

April 21 referendum vote

Voters narrowly approved the constitutional amendment on April 21. The court’s opinion said, “This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void.”

The seven justices who decided the case are appointed by the state legislature. The dispute before them focused on the process used to place the amendment on the ballot, not on the shape of the new districts themselves.

Virginia House seats

The practical effect is that the approved plan cannot move forward under this ruling. For Democrats, that leaves the current delegation map in place, with its six-to-five split, unless a new legal or legislative effort changes the outcome later.

The case sits inside a larger fight over control of House seats in the midterm elections, but Friday’s decision turned on Virginia’s ballot procedure first. For readers in the state, the immediate change is simple: the voter-backed redistricting path has been blocked before any new map could take effect.