The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday invalidated a new, voter-approved redistricting map, delivering a significant victory for Republicans in the state ahead of the fast-approaching 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n
“We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia,” the Virginia Supreme Court said in the ruling. “This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.”<\/p>\n
The Virginia Supreme Court heard\u00a0oral arguments last month over the newly passed congressional map, which voters in the state approved by a narrow 51% to 49% margin.<\/p>\n
The ballot measure would have given\u00a0 the Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature \u2014 rather than the state’s current nonpartisan commission \u2014 temporary redistricting power through 2030.<\/p>\n
It was also expected to yield a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation<\/u><\/a>, up from their current 6-5 edge.<\/p>\n Republicans quickly sued to block the effort, prompting the state supreme court to hear oral arguments last month.<\/p>\n RNC chair Joe Gruters praised the ruling Friday, describing it on social media as a “HUGE WIN” for election integrity.<\/p>\n “This was a clear violation of the Constitution \u2014 that\u2019s why the RNC stepped in to stop Democrats\u2019 rigged maps and WON!” he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Virginia is one of the latest battlegrounds in the redistricting war pitting President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers against Democrats.<\/p>\n Trump last spring floated the idea of a rare \u2014 if not unheard of \u2014 mid-decade congressional redistricting effort in an effort to prevent the so-called “blue wave” that saw Democrats retake the House majority in the 2018\u00a0 midterms during his first term in office.<\/p>\n The effort was aimed at redrawing congressional district maps in GOP-led states to pad the fragile House majority and keep control of the chamber after the midterms<\/a>, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.<\/p>\n Asked last summer about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats to maps across the country, Trump said, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that\u2019ll be five.”<\/p>\n This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday invalidated a new, voter-approved redistricting map, delivering a significant victory for Republicans in the state ahead of the fast-approaching 2026 midterm elections. “We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia,” the Virginia Supreme Court said in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}