By Joseph Ax and Tim Reid
May 8 (Reuters) – Virginia’s top court on Friday threw out a new electoral map that was crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. congressional seats to Democrats, in a setback to Democratic hopes of retaking the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.
In a 4-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court rejected a Democratic-backed ballot measure approved by voters in April that reconfigured the state’s U.S. House of Representatives districts for partisan advantage.
Ruling in favor of a Republican challenge, the court’s majority found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedure last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in time to reach the ballot ahead of the November election.
The ruling boosts Republican hopes of keeping control of the U.S. House, despite a razor-thin majority and deep voter unhappiness with President Donald Trump.
On his Truth Social account, Trump called the ruling a “huge win for the Republican Party.”
Democrats cried foul, with Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, calling the court’s decision undemocratic and ignoring the will of millions of voters who had voted in favor of changing the electoral map.
Kyle Kondik, a nonpartisan elections analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said while it was still too early to predict the impact of the ruling, it had undoubtedly improved the electoral chances for Republicans.
“Whatever odds you would have given to Republicans winning the House yesterday, I think you would raise them today,” he said.
Still, Republicans face significant political headwinds ahead of November’s elections, with many voters unhappy with Trump’s handling of the economy and the Iran war which has increased gas prices.
Marcia S. Price, a Democratic state delegate who played a central role in getting the new electoral map passed by voters, said the main job now was to work even harder to turn out voters to flip Republican-held seats from the old map.
“You lick your wounds, get back up and keep fighting,” she said in an interview.
Democrats pursued the Virginia measure as part of a nationwide battle by both parties to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit. The mid-cycle process of redrawing maps is unusual. Maps are typically redrawn once a decade after the national census.
Republicans now hold a clear advantage in the fight, which began last year when Trump pushed Texas Republicans to rip up their electoral map and draw new district lines, targeting five Democratic U.S. House incumbents.
Democrats suffered a major blow last week when the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
Already, Republican-controlled states such as Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina have taken steps toward drawing new maps in time for the November elections, with some even postponing party primary elections to give lawmakers time.
DEMOCRATS STARTED TOO LATE
With Virginia’s map now invalidated, Republicans could eventually end up with an advantage in 10 House seats or more nationwide, pending the outcome of the efforts in those Southern states.
Republicans can afford to lose only two net seats in November’s elections to maintain control of the U.S. House.
Virginia voters had approved the Democratic-backed map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% to 48.3% margin, according to an Associated Press tally. The referendum was the final step in a complicated legislative maneuver to sidestep a constitutional amendment, passed by voters in 2020, that had put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.
Under Virginia state law, two consecutive legislatures – with a state election in between – must approve a proposed constitutional amendment before it can be put to a vote.
The Democratic legislative majority approved the amendment in October, days before the November state election. Democrats, who gained additional legislative seats in that vote, then passed the amendment for a second time in January and scheduled the referendum for April.
Republicans filed multiple lawsuits, claiming in part that there was no intervening election since early voting had already started when the amendment was first passed.
In Friday’s decision, the Virginia Supreme Court agreed.
“The General Assembly voted for the first time to propose the constitutional amendment to the electorate on October 31, 2025,” the majority wrote. “By that date, over 1.3 million votes had been cast in the general election, which was approximately 40% of the total vote for that election cycle.”
In dissent, Chief Justice Cleo Powell, joined by two other justices, wrote that the court had improperly stretched the meaning of the word “election” to include weeks of early voting.
“This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and federal law define an election,” Powell said.
Kondik said if Democrats had begun the process of trying to redraw congressional maps sooner, they might have prevailed in court against the Republican legal challenge, which was led by the Republican National Committee.
“Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose,” said Joe Gruters, the RNC chairman.
Underscoring the stakes of the Virginia redistricting fight, Democratic and Republican-affiliated groups spent close to $100 million on the referendum campaign.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Tim Reid; Editing by Will Dunham, Ross Colvin, Alistair Bell and Sanjeev Miglani)
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