The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia Democrats’ emergency bid to save the state’s redistricting effort that voters approved last month, leaving in place a state court ruling that blocked the plan. The unsigned order came without any justice noting a dissent.
The fight centered on whether the justices had anything to review beyond Virginia law. Democrats argued the case raised federal issues and should draw the court in, while the NAACP backed that position in an amicus brief saying the ruling “constitutes a deprivation of constitutional due process that requires this Court’s immediate intervention.” State Republicans said the state high court had ruled on “pure state-law grounds” and that “no federal issue is present.”
That mattered because the Supreme Court usually stays out of state court rulings interpreting state constitutions unless a federal issue is also involved. Virginia’s justices struck down the measure in a 4-3 ruling, saying the process that put it on the ballot violated Virginia’s Constitution. The majority said the state’s amendment procedures are “laborious,” were “slow-walk[ed]” and are meant to “guard against hasty changes.” It also said the redistricting effort was poised to deliver more seats to Democrats.
The decision lands in the middle of a broader mid-decade redistricting fight that has already reached the high court. Earlier this week, the court granted emergency relief to Alabama Republicans who cited Louisiana v. Callais as justification to use a congressional map that had previously been deemed discriminatory. The court has also approved the Texas effort, a Democratic countermeasure in California and a New York Republican effort in prior orders affecting congressional maps.
The bigger backdrop is the court’s own line from 2019 that federal courts cannot do anything about partisan gerrymandering. That leaves state courts and state constitutions as one of the few remaining battlegrounds over how maps get drawn. For Virginia Democrats, Friday’s order means the voter-approved path to new lines is blocked for now, and the state court ruling that stopped it remains the law of the case.
The next move is likely to come in the political and legal push to redraw maps again, with Virginia now joining a wave of states testing how far they can go in the current map wars. For the moment, the justices made their answer plain: there was not enough federal ground to step in.
