Democratic leaders in Virginia asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to use a congressional map drawn by Democrats and approved by voters in a referendum in April.
In an emergency application, the state’s attorney general and other officials urged the justices to overturn a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the redistricting process had violated the state’s Constitution, a major setback for Democrats in a fierce battle over which party will control the U.S. House.
In their filing on Monday, Virginia state officials claimed that the ruling by the state’s Supreme Court had amounted to “judicial defiance” of the will of the voters to create a new district map. The officials asserted that the state court was “deeply mistaken” on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the nation.”
That decision, they argued, had “deprived voters, candidates and the commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”
The state Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers had violated the multipart process to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
State supreme courts are typically the final word in interpreting their own constitutions, and the U.S. Supreme Court does not usually review those rulings.
But in the application on Monday, the Virginia officials argued that the justices should weigh in because the state court’s ruling revolved around what they contend is a question of federal law — the definition of “Election Day.”
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Democratic state lawmakers violated Virginia’s Constitution when they pushed for an amendment authorizing them to draw a new congressional map.
In Virginia, to be adopted, a constitutional amendment must be passed in the legislature twice, with a statewide election occurring between. In a 4-to-3 decision, the state court justices found that the first passage of the amendment came too late to be valid because, by the time the General Assembly acted, more than a million early voters had already cast their ballots in the 2025 general election.
In their filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Virginia state officials argued that state court ruling was flawed because under federal law, “Election Day” means the single day on which votes are counted, regardless of when they were cast. Therefore, because the General Assembly voted before the day of the 2025 statewide election, its action should be valid.
They contend that the Supreme Court will weigh in on that question in another case the court is considering over mail-in ballots in Mississippi. In that case, the Republican National Committee and Mississippi’s state G.O.P. challenged state laws that allow the counting of ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive days later, arguing that federal law defines a single day for an election. In that case, the Democratic National Committee filed a friend of the court brief in support of the state’s grace period — and a broader interpretation of Election Day.
The move by Virginia officials is the latest in a series of emergency requests to the justices in the wake of their decision to narrow the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On April 29, the justices overturned Louisiana’s congressional district map, finding that it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Since that decision, Louisiana v. Callais, the justices have received emergency redistricting cases from Alabama, Louisiana and now Virginia, as political leaders scramble to take advantage of the ruling through redistricting ahead of the midterm elections. Others may follow.
The legal issue in the Virginia case, however, is not rooted in the Supreme Court’s recent action.
If the Virginia Supreme Court ruling stands, it would wipe out four newly created Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts.
Some Democrats in Virginia, including the governor, on Friday expressed disappointment in the decision but encouraged people to respond with their votes in November.
But Jay Jones, the state attorney general whose office had argued the case before the Virginia Supreme Court, said in a statement that he was “evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people” and then filed a notice in state court that he planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, likewise said after the ruling that Democratic leaders were “exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.”
The dizzying pace of the elections litigation after the court’s decision is the latest chapter in a battle over redistricting that began last summer when President Trump encouraged Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to try to maintain Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House.
That push, which began in Texas and then prompted similar efforts in Democratic-led states like California and Virginia, has only accelerated since the Supreme Court’s ruling reinterpreting the Voting Rights Act.
In their decision, the court’s conservative majority said that “vast social change,” particularly in the South, called for a rethinking of challenges brought under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The court set a higher standard for challenging a voting map, notably that challengers must now be able to show a strong inference that racial discrimination, rather than politics, motivated lawmakers’ district choices.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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