The Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday dejected a voter-approved constitutional amendment allowing partisan running of the state’s congressional districts, ruling by a vote of 4-3 that lawmakers violated procedural rules in proposing the amendment.
In a majority opinion written by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, the court noted that the general meeting date was October 31, 2025 vote to move forward The change came after early voting had already begun in the intervening House elections and violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution. This provision requires a “general election” between the two required votes by the Legislature on a proposed amendment.
About the time the legislature acted 1.3 million Virginians– around 40 percent of all voters in 2025 – had already cast their vote. The court rejected the Commonwealth’s contention that “election” refers only to Election Day, finding that the term includes “the combined actions of voters casting their votes and election officials receiving those votes.”
The amendment, briefly approved would have been temporarily suspended by voters last month Virginia’s Bipartisan Redistricting Commission and authorized lawmakers to redraw congressional maps in the middle of the decade. A proposed replacement map would have moved Virginia’s 11-member House delegation from a 6-5 split to a projected 10-1 edge. The 2021 court ordered The cards remain in effect for the November 2026 congressional elections.
Chief Justice Powell, joined by Justices Mann and Fulton, dissented, arguing that the majority’s broad definition of “election” conflicted with both Virginia law and federal law that treat elections as one-day events.
The decision comes amid an escalating battle over redistricting in the middle of the decade. Virginia Democrats had pushed the amendment as a countermeasure to mid-decade Republican-led gerrymandering in states like Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis recently unveiled a map with four additional Republican seats after the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling weakened the Voting Rights Act.
