Lawyers for Virginia Democrats and Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones asked the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon to allow the state to use a new congressional map in the 2026 elections. The lawyers contended that a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court invalidating an amendment to Virginia’s constitution giving the Virginia General Assembly the power to enact new maps was “deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.”
The 24-page filing was the latest in a series of filings asking the Supreme Court to intervene in state disputes over efforts to gain partisan advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives by redistricting before the 2026 elections.
In February of this year, Virginia’s General Assembly adopted a new map that would have favored Democrats in 10 of the state’s 11 seats in the U.S. House – a potential increase of four seats from the current balance between Democrats and Republicans in Virginia. The implementation of the map hinged on obtaining approval for an amendment to the Virginia constitution that would give the state Legislature the power to draw a new congressional map outside of the normal cycle following the decennial census. In April, Virginia voters approved that amendment by a margin of three percentage points.
By a vote of 4-3, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled last week that because the General Assembly had not followed proper procedures when it put the new amendment on the ballot, the referendum was not valid.
Although the Supreme Court does not normally review decisions by state courts that rest on state law, the Virginia Democrats and Jones argued that the justices should intervene in this case because it 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, the Democrats and Jones 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.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency appeals from the area that includes Virginia, instructed the Republican legislators who had challenged the amendment process to file a response by 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday.