The Supreme Court of Virginia has issued a major election‑law ruling that goes to the heart of partisan gerrymandering in the Commonwealth.
At the center of the Virginia redistricting court challenge is when an election begins and how that timing can limit efforts to rewrite the Constitution of Virginia and redraw congressional districts.
How Virginia Got Here
For decades, whichever party controlled the legislature drew maps that protected its own interests, even as scholars and judges warned that partisan gerrymanders undermine basic democratic rights. In 2020, voters responded by amending the state constitution to create a bipartisan redistricting commission, with a backstop that handed the map‑drawing job to the Supreme Court of Virginia if the commission deadlocked.
When the commission deadlocked in 2021, the Court stepped in and drew new congressional and state legislative lines. Independent analysts later praised those maps because the partisan balance they produced (six seats for Democrats and five for Republicans) closely mirrored how Virginians had been voting statewide, reflecting only a small, voter‑driven edge for Democrats rather than a built‑in partisan advantage.
The General Assembly later pursued a different redistricting plan. Democratic members, citing the need to keep up with redistricting moves in Republican‑led states such as Texas and Florida, expanded the scope of a 2024 special session over objections that it had never been called to consider constitutional amendments. They then used the 2026 regular session to advance an amendment that would temporarily suspend the commission provision and let the legislature redraw Virginia’s 11 U.S. House districts mid‑decade.
In February 2026, lawmakers approved a new congressional map that would take effect only if voters passed the amendment. Based on recent elections, the map was expected to turn Democrats’ modest statewide vote edge into a dramatically lopsided advantage in seats, likely giving them control of nearly all of Virginia’s U.S. House districts. The ballot question described the amendment as a way to restore fairness to Virginia’s elections, even though analysts projected that its practical effect would have been to entrench one party’s hold on the delegation.
Early voting on that referendum opened March 6, the same day the question first appeared on the ballot. By the time polls closed on April 21, the amendment had narrowly passed. The fight over Virginia’s maps then shifted from the ballot box into the courts.
The Constitutional Challenge
Soon after the vote, a group of state officials and Virginia voters went to state court to challenge how the amendment had been put on the ballot and approved. They focused on Article XII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution, which requires the General Assembly to approve an amendment in one session, then stand for a House of Delegates election, and only then vote on the same proposal again before sending it to the people. The idea is to give Virginians two chances to weigh in — first by choosing delegates who support or oppose the proposal, and then by voting on the amendment itself.
Here, the challengers argued that the sequence was reversed. The 2025 House of Delegates election ran from mid‑September through Election Day. While hundreds of thousands of Virginians were already casting ballots, lawmakers took their first vote to approve the gerrymandering amendment on October 31, denying early voters the chance to choose delegates with full knowledge of the constitutional change on the table.
What Counts as an Election?
Justice D. Arthur Kelsey’s majority opinion turns on the meaning of one word in Article XII: election. The state urged the court to read “the next general election” as Election Day alone — the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The justices rejected that narrow view, noting that Virginia law allows weeks of early and absentee voting and that elections in the Commonwealth have long been understood as a process rather than a single moment.
Drawing on federal cases that describe an election as the combined actions of voters and officials culminating in a final choice, the court held that a general election includes the entire voting period. In this reading, when Article XII refers to the “next general election” for the House of Delegates, it means the full stretch from the start of early voting through the close of polls on Election Day, not just the last day itself.
Once the court adopted that understanding of the general election, the timing of the amendment process no longer satisfied the constitutional requirements. The first legislative vote on the gerrymandering amendment came after the House election was already underway and hundreds of thousands of ballots had been cast. Those early voters never had the opportunity Article XII is meant to guarantee: choosing delegates knowing those delegates would vote on a specific constitutional amendment.
For the majority, that timing undercut the intervening‑election safeguard built into the amendment process. Article XII requires strict compliance. Because the first legislative vote occurred after the 2025 House election had begun, there was no valid intervening election between the General Assembly’s first and second approvals of the proposal. On that basis, the court held that the resulting referendum vote was legally “null and void” and that the new congressional map tied to it cannot take effect. Virginia will therefore keep using the court‑drawn 2021 maps, and the “restore fairness” amendment, though it narrowly passed, has no legal force.
The Dissent
Chief Justice Powell, joined by Justices Mann and Fulton, would have upheld the amendment and the new map. The dissent reads “election” much more narrowly and takes a more deferential view of the General Assembly’s power to regulate how voting works.
In the dissent’s view, the Constitution lets lawmakers define the time and manner of elections, and Virginia law does that by defining a general election as “an election held in the Commonwealth on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.” Early ballots are deemed to be cast “prior to any election,” not as part of the election itself. Treating an election as a 45‑day window, the dissent argues, risks broader consequences, including complications for rules that turn on the “time of the election,” such as juror and witness obligations or age and residency requirements.
The dissent also warns that the majority’s approach could conflict with federal statutes that set a single federal election day for congressional and presidential races, and criticizes the majority for relying heavily on history and dictionaries rather than the Constitution’s own text. On the remaining procedural issues, the dissent would leave questions about internal legislative rules and the now‑repealed publication statute to the political branches, instead of using them as a basis to overturn a popular vote that otherwise satisfies Article XII.
What This Means Going Forward
For Virginia voters, the takeaway is that the court has reinforced a slow, voter‑centered process for changing the state constitution, and made clear that lawmakers cannot time their votes to avoid a true intervening election. The court ruling also underscores the justices’ willingness to enforce those procedural limits — even against a recently voter-approved statewide referendum — when it concludes that elected officials have tried to move faster than the constitution allows.
Meanwhile, Virginia officials have now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in, and the unprecedented mid-decade redistricting battle continues in other states.
Related Resources:
- Court Strikes Down Trump’s Citizenship Voting Order as Unconstitutional (FindLaw’s Federal Courts)
- A Quick Summary of Legal Battles Over Redistricting for 2026 (FindLaw’s Federal Courts)
- Supreme Court Widens Candidate Standing to Challenge Mail‑Ballot Rules (FindLaw’s Federal Courts)
