Virginia Democrats Escalate Redistricting Fight to U.S. Supreme Court
Democrats on Monday filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to overturn the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of the state’s mid-decade redistricting effort, which was passed by referendum last month and would overwhelmingly benefit Democrats.
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The state spent $5.2 million to pay for the special election to ask voters to approve the map, which would have created ten districts that favor Democrats, with just one district favoring Republicans.
The new map was designed to allow Democrats to pick up as many as four seats in the upcoming midterm elections.
But after the Republican National Committee challenged the new map in court, judges for the state’s supreme court found that the legislature made procedural errors in how it placed the question on the ballot last month. The court’s majority found that the legislature violated the multi-step process for putting constitutional amendments on the ballot.
“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the judges wrote.
Virginia House Speaker Don Scott issued a statement last week saying, “We respect the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia.” But Scott was one of several Virginia leaders behind Democrats’ emergency stay application to the Supreme Court on Monday.
In the on Monday, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones argued the state supreme court misinterpreted federal law by treating an “election” as a single day rather than an ongoing process. He further suggests the court improperly assumed the role of the state legislature in regulating federal elections.
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In addition to the appeal, Democrats have floated several other ideas to try to circumvent the court’s ruling.
The New York Times reports that Virginia lawmakers are “discussing an audacious and possibly far-fetched idea for trying to restore a congressional map.”
The “most dramatic” idea the lawmakers floated, according to the report, was to go so far as to replace the entire Virginia Supreme Court in order to reinstate the map. That idea “drew mixed reactions,” the Times said.
The report cited a “private discussion on Saturday that included Democratic House members from Virginia and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, the lawmakers vented anger at their defeat at the Virginia Supreme Court, spoke about a collective determination to flip two or three Republican-held seats under the existing map and discussed a bank-shot proposal to redraw the congressional lines anyway.”
Democrats “did not land on a specific course forward,” the report adds.
In order to replace the entire court, Democrats are considering an idea proposed by The Downballot, a progressive newsletter, that suggested state Democrats move to lower the mandatory retirement age for state supreme court justices from 75 to 54, the age of the youngest current justice, or younger. Democrats hold a trifecta of power in Virginia and could lower the age, and then move to appoint Democrat-friendly judges to the court.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, for his part, urged Virginia voters to “call their delegates and senators and demand that they ignore this illegitimate ruling.”
