Legal professionals for a bunch of Republican legislators (together with an election official and two registered voters) urged the U.S. Supreme Courtroom on Thursday afternoon to depart in place a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Courtroom which struck down an modification to that state’s structure permitting the Virginia Normal Meeting to enact a brand new congressional map. Calling the request to pause the state supreme courtroom’s ruling “extraordinary,” the legislators burdened that the case concerned “state courts making use of state regulation to carry state actors accountable.”
The 15-page filing got here simply three days after the state’s legal professional common, Jay Jones, and different Virginia Democrats requested the justices to dam the state supreme courtroom’s choice and permit the state to make use of the brand new map, which is predicted to strongly favor Democrats, within the 2026 elections.
The Virginia Normal Meeting had adopted the brand new map in February of this yr, as a part of the continued effort by states throughout the nation to offer one political celebration or the opposite a bonus within the U.S. Home of Representatives. However earlier than the state may truly use the map, it wanted the state’s voters to approve an modification to the Virginia structure that may give the Normal Meeting the ability to attract a brand new congressional map outdoors of the traditional cycle following the decennial census. Voters authorized that modification in April by a margin of around three percentage points.
A divided Virginia Supreme Courtroom invalidated the modification on Could 8. It ruled that as a result of the Normal Meeting had not adopted correct procedures when it put the brand new modification on the poll, the referendum was not legitimate. Particularly, the bulk reasoned, beneath the state structure the Normal Meeting should approve a proposed modification to the structure throughout two totally different legislative periods, which should be separated by an election to the Normal Meeting’s Home of Delegates. However on this case, the bulk mentioned, greater than 1.3 million votes had already been forged by the point the Normal Meeting first voted on the modification on Oct. 31, 2025, and thus “the Normal Meeting handed the proposed constitutional modification for the primary time properly after voters had begun casting ballots in the course of the 2025 common election.”
Jones and the Virginia Democrats defending the Normal Meeting’s actions came to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to intervene. They contended that the dispute implicates “two important problems with federal regulation” – particularly, the which means of the time period “election” beneath federal regulation, and the concept that the state courtroom so “impermissibly transgressed the peculiar bounds of judicial evaluate” that its ruling needs to be reversed. Furthermore, they added, the Virginia Supreme Courtroom’s ruling “overthrows [a] democratic end result simply days earlier than the Commonwealth should start its preparations to manage the 2026 midterm election.”
Of their submitting on Thursday afternoon, the Republican legislators countered that it’s too late for the Supreme Courtroom to intervene now as a result of Jones had “‘identifie[d] Could 12 as the purpose of no return’ for on-the-ground election preparations.” Certainly, they famous, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has now indicated that Virginia won’t use the 2026 map within the upcoming elections.
The Supreme Courtroom must also depart the Virginia Supreme Courtroom’s ruling in place, the legislators continued, since Jones and the Democrats didn’t make any of their arguments based mostly on federal regulation till they reached the Supreme Courtroom. As a result of they “by no means raised federal claims under,” the legislators contended, “[t]he Virginia Supreme Courtroom didn’t determine any. This Courtroom shouldn’t take into account them for the primary time.”
Really helpful Quotation: Amy Howe, Republican legislators urge justices to depart Virginia Supreme Courtroom’s redistricting ruling in place, SCOTUSblog (Could. 14, 2026, 9:38 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/05/republican-legislators-urge-justices-to-leave-virginia-supreme-courts-redistricting-ruling-in-pl/