Lawyers for a group of Republican legislators (along with an election official and two registered voters) urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon to leave in place a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court which struck down an amendment to that state’s constitution allowing the Virginia General Assembly to enact a new congressional map. Calling the request to pause the state supreme court’s ruling “extraordinary,” the legislators stressed that the case involved “state courts applying state law to hold state actors accountable.”
The 15-page filing came just three days after the state’s attorney general, Jay Jones, and other Virginia Democrats asked the justices to block the state supreme court’s decision and allow the state to use the new map, which is expected to strongly favor Democrats, in the 2026 elections.
The Virginia General Assembly had adopted the new map in February of this year, as part of the ongoing effort by states across the country to give one political party or the other an advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives. But before the state could actually use the map, it needed the state’s voters to approve an amendment to the Virginia constitution that would give the General Assembly the power to draw a new congressional map outside of the normal cycle following the decennial census. Voters approved that amendment in April by a margin of around three percentage points.
A divided Virginia Supreme Court invalidated the amendment on May 8. It ruled that because the General Assembly had not followed proper procedures when it put the new amendment on the ballot, the referendum was not valid. Specifically, the majority reasoned, under the state constitution the General Assembly must approve a proposed amendment to the constitution during two different legislative sessions, which must be separated by an election to the General Assembly’s House of Delegates. But in this case, the majority said, more than 1.3 million votes had already been cast by the time the General Assembly first voted on the amendment on Oct. 31, 2025, and thus “the General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election.”
Jones and the Virginia Democrats defending the General Assembly’s actions came to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to intervene. They contended that the dispute implicates “two critical issues of federal law” – specifically, the meaning of the term “election” under federal law, and the idea that the state court so “impermissibly transgressed the ordinary bounds of judicial review” that its ruling should be reversed. Moreover, they added, the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling “overthrows [a] democratic outcome just days before the Commonwealth must begin its preparations to administer the 2026 midterm election.”
In their filing on Thursday afternoon, the Republican legislators countered that it is too late for the Supreme Court to intervene now because Jones had “‘identifie[d] May 12 as the point of no return’ for on-the-ground election preparations.” Indeed, they noted, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has now indicated that Virginia will not use the 2026 map in the upcoming elections.
The Supreme Court should also leave the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling in place, the legislators continued, since Jones and the Democrats did not make any of their arguments based on federal law until they reached the Supreme Court. Because they “never raised federal claims below,” the legislators contended, “[t]he Virginia Supreme Court didn’t decide any. This Court shouldn’t consider them for the first time.”
Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Republican legislators urge justices to leave Virginia Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling in place, SCOTUSblog (May. 14, 2026, 9:38 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/05/republican-legislators-urge-justices-to-leave-virginia-supreme-courts-redistricting-ruling-in-pl/
