On Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved amendment redrawing its voting districts.
“The decision means that Republicans will likely net seats in the nationwide gerrymandering battle,” Politico explained. “In a maximalist scenario, Republicans could net more than 10 seats from redrawn lines alone — with several Southern states in the midst of redrawing their own districts following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted much of the Voting Rights Act.”
To put it in plain English, Republicans just further rigged the vote to maintain their grip on power because they know they and their policies are very unpopular.
I’m not a lawyer, but AP explained the grounds for overruling the will of Virginians this way: “The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting.”
Whatever the merits of the ruling, or lack thereof, this should be seen as a signal for Democrats to fight even harder. C&L managing editor Karoli Kuns is emphatic on that point. She elaborated on a Bluesky post, saying, “It's high time for Democrats to play by the same rules as Republicans. Governor Spanberger should do what Ohio did and just publish the new maps and go ahead without regard to the Republican Supreme Court ruling,” she said. “We can play by the rules and lose, or we can play under our rules. They just disregarded their own constitution in Tennessee to take away the only district representing Black people there. It's time for Dems to do the same.”
Karoli’s views are echoed by some heavy hitters in the Democratic and progressive spheres. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement saying, “We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision. … Our fight is not over. We are just getting started.” Virginia's Democratic attorney general, Jay Jones, said in his statement, "My team is carefully reviewing this unprecedented order, and we are evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of Virginia’s elections."
Political columnist Greg Sargent wrote that the ruling “dramatically raises the urgency for Dems to redistrict in other states before 2028. The stakes in state legislative races this cycle just got more urgent.” In response to the U.S. Supreme Court giving a big redistricting win by gutting the Voting Rights Act last week, Sargent wrote, “Democrats need to accept that they're entering a new era of procedural Total War. This includes a big escalation in redistricting, but it's not limited to that. If Republicans don't like it, tough shit: They made this world, and they are the ones inflicting it on us.”
You can see in the Bluesky posts below that lawyers are ready to push on as well.
One small piece of good news is that the Republicans’ anti-democratic vote-rigging scheme may yet not save them the House in November. The New York Times wrote that despite their gerrymandering advantage, “Republicans are battling headwinds posed by Mr. Trump’s poor approval ratings, the unpopular war in Iran and rising energy prices.” Trump’s war “has alienated some leading conservative voices, and Republican candidates have been exasperated by Mr. Trump’s fight with Pope Leo XIV over the war.”
If anything, the Republican efforts to obliterate Democratic and minority districts and their representation should galvanize Democrats and voters to make sure it’s Trump and the Republicans who get obliterated in November.
LFG.
