Virginia Democrats ask Supreme Court to restore their new map

Virginia officials are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the state to implement the redistricting plan voters approved last month that could net Democrats as many as four additional congressional seats. The state’s attorney general, Jay Jones, filed an emergency appeal with the high court Monday following an unexpected, 4-3 decision from the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday invalidating the ballot measure. Jones asked Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals arising from Virginia, to issue a temporary stay that would allow election preparations to continue under the lines newly drawn to favor Democrats. Roberts did not immediately act but is likely to refer the request to the full bench of the Supreme Court for a vote. The appeal is Democrats’ latest effort to shore up their response as Republican political leaders rush to gerrymander various states in the wake of the Virginia court’s ruling last week and the high court’s decision to narrow the Voting Rights Act in April. Still, many legal experts have declared Jones’ request to be a longshot because federal courts typically defer to state courts on interpretations of state law. The Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling against the new map rested on the definition of “Election Day” in state law, concluding that the period of an election encompasses the window for early and absentee voting and, therefore, lawmakers moved too slowly to initiate the referendum process, when early voting was already underway. However, Democrats’ filing Monday argues that the definition the state court adopted of an “election” conflicts with longstanding federal law as well as the position the Trump administration staked out in a pending U.S. Supreme Court case. Jones also argues that the ruling from Virginia’s high court violated the Constitution by effectively usurping the state legislature’s authority. “The Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision … depended on a grave misreading of federal law that no other court, state or federal, has ever accepted and which numerous federal courts have expressly rejected,” Jones wrote. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that language in the Constitution giving state legislatures the power to set the rules for federal congressional elections does not completely sideline state courts from overseeing the process. However, writing for the high court’s majority at the time, Roberts declared that “state courts may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.” Roberts on Monday instructed the Republicans who challenged the Virginia referendum to respond to Jones’ appeal by Thursday at 5 p.m. eastern.