A Virginia court rejected a redistricting effort this week in a major blow to Democrats.
Tazewell County Circuit Judge Jack Hurley Jr. wrote that the Democrat-dominated Virginia General Assembly did not follow the correct” procedures when passing the proposed amendment. In one procedural error, the “resolution was passed strictly along party lines” and was “not by unanimous vote as required under House Joint Resolution 6001, and it did not pass by a two-thirds super majority that would have ben required to demand a new Special Session to consider this business.”
The proposed amendment was further “neither published by the Clerk of the House of Delegates, nor was it posted at the front door of every Courthouse.”
Virginia’s Democratic leaders said in a statement on the ruling that nothing “will dissuade us from continuing to move forward and put this matter directly to the voters.”
“Republicans who can’t win at the ballot box are abusing the legal process in an attempt to sow confusion and block Virginians from voting,” they said. “We will be appealing this ruling immediately and we expect to prevail. This was court-shopping, plain and simple. We’re prepared for the next step, and voters – not politicians – will have the final say.”
Other states’ redistricting maps are also facing the courts, with California Republicans urging the Supreme Court to block the state’s new congressional map, accusing state officials of gerrymandering.
The Supreme Court previously upheld Texas’s redistricting map. “Based on our preliminary evaluation of this case, Texas satisfies the traditional criteria for interim relief,” the Court wrote in December. The decision notes that the district court “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.”
