BREAKING: VA Supreme Court, on a 4-3 Vote (Along Partisan Lines), Strikes Down Redistricting Amendment

The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled (4-3; along partisan lines)…and it’s not good news, unfortunately. 🙁

On March 6, 2026, the General Assembly of Virginia submitted to Virginia voters a proposed constitutional amendment that authorizes partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts in the Commonwealth. We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.”

Also interesting:

It is fair to ask whether we could have or should have reviewed the constitutionality of the proposed amendment prior to it being presented to the voters. But it is not a question the Commonwealth should ask. Throughout this litigation, the Commonwealth has insisted that we cannot lawfully decide this case prior to the referendum…Having successfully insisted (over the objection of the Claimants) that we postpone judicial review of the constitutional amendment until after the election process, it might be tempting for the Commonwealth to think that the final vote implicitly stacks the deck in its favor — perhaps enough so that the exercise of any judicial review could be viewed as an ultra vires effort to overturn the will of the people. If this supposition were true — that Scott forbids pre-election challenges and that “the will of the people” forbids post-election challenges — then judicial review of allegedly unconstitutional procedures used to adopt a constitutional amendment would not exist in the Commonwealth of Virginia. On the issues before us in this case, we hold that the ultimate vote margin plays no role in the analytics of our judicial review of the constitutionality of the pre-election constitutionalamendment process. Neither a high margin of success nor a single-digit margin, supra at 5, logically or legally matters…

And:

…Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia mandates a detailed process governing the lawful adoption of constitutional amendments. These procedural requirements may seem laborious to some, perhaps even painstakingly so…we hold that the definition of “general election” in Article XII, Section 1 describes the combined actions of voters casting ballots and officers of election receiving those votes and closing the polls on the last day of the election. The plain and ordinary meaning of the expression matches the historical definition embraced by the courts and legal scholars. Article XII, Section 1 requires an intervening “general election” after the first legislative vote in favor of a proposed amendment and prior to the second legislative vote before the General Assembly has the constitutional authority to submit the proposal to the voters.  In this case, the General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election…

…To us, it is common sense that the phrase “general election,” as used in the context of Article XII, Section 1, includes the combined actions of citizens casting votes and election officials receiving these votes and closing the polls on the last day of the election. The purpose of Article XII, Section 1 is to give voters the opportunity to participate in the process of amending their Constitution. It truly would be a foolish consistency if we insisted (and we do not) that the historical definition of “election” applies in exactly the same way to the plethora of different legal texts ensconced in different policy contexts. The dissent does just that with its inflexible, one-size-fits-all definition of “election” as a single 24-hour period, Election Day — the last day of voting. And that inflexibility, deployed by the Commonwealth in this case, ended up denying over 1.3 million Virginians their constitutional right to have a voice in the debate over whether their Constitution should be amended — thereby eroding one of the core rights that Article XII, Section 1 was intended to safeguard…

While the Commonwealth is free by its lights to do the right thing for the right reason, the Rule of Law requires that it be done the right way. Under the Constitution of Virginia, the right way “necessitate[s] compliance with the requirements of a deliberately lengthy, precise, and balanced procedure,” Coleman, 219 Va. at 153, governing the lawful adoption of constitutional amendments.

In this case, the Commonwealth submitted a proposed constitutional amendment to Virginia voters in an unprecedented manner that violated the intervening-election requirement in Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. 31 This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void. For this reason, the congressional district maps issued by this Court in 2021 pursuant to Article II, Section 6-A of the Constitution of Virginia remain the governing maps for the upcoming 2026 congressional elections.

P.S. Three justices – CHIEF JUSTICE POWELL, JUSTICE MANN and JUSTICE FULTON  – dissented in this case.

P.P.S. So much for all the Democrats running for the new VA07, new VA05, new VA06, etc, etc? What do they do now? Having said that, with the current maps, I think that Dems can still get to 8D-3R or even 9D-2R – defeat Jen Kiggans in VA02, Rob Wittman in VA01, and maybe John McGuire in VA05.

P.P.P.S. Hate to say “I told you so,” but some of us (raises hand!) warned against the fatally flawed “bipartisan redistricting commission” idiocy back in 2020…terminal naivete, and it’s really hurt us.

For the record, the Republican hack Virginia Supreme Court justice (D. Arthur Kelsey)’s term ends on January 31, 2027. Replacing him with a Democrat then should flip the court to 4D-3R. Then Stephen R. McCullough (R) is outta there in March 2028…5D-2R time!