The New York Times reports:

Democratic leaders in Virginia asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to use a congressional map drawn by Democrats and approved by voters in a referendum in April.

In an emergency application, the state’s attorney general and other officials urged the justices to overturn a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled last week that the redistricting process had violated the state’s Constitution, a major setback for Democrats in a fierce battle over which party will control the U.S. House.

In their filing on Monday, Virginia state officials claimed that the ruling by the state’s Supreme Court had amounted to “judicial defiance” of the will of the voters to create a new district map. The officials asserted that the state court was “deeply mistaken” on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the nation.”

That decision, they argued, had “deprived voters, candidates and the commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”

The state Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers had violated the multipart process to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
State supreme courts are typically the final word in interpreting their own constitutions, and the U.S. Supreme Court does not usually review those rulings.

But in the application on Monday, the Virginia officials argued that the justices should weigh in because the state court’s ruling revolved around what they contend is a question of federal law — the definition of “Election Day.”

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Democratic state lawmakers violated Virginia’s Constitution when they pushed for an amendment authorizing them to draw a new congressional map.

In Virginia, to be adopted, a constitutional amendment must be passed in the legislature twice, with a statewide election occurring between. In a 4-to-3 decision, the state court justices found that the first passage of the amendment came too late to be valid because, by the time the General Assembly acted, more than a million early voters had already cast their ballots in the 2025 general election.

In their filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Virginia state officials argued that state court ruling was flawed because under federal law, “Election Day” means the single day on which votes are counted, regardless of when they were cast. Therefore, because the General Assembly voted before the day of the 2025 statewide election, its action should be valid. [Continue reading…]