A circuit court judge on Monday dismissed Lynchburg’s request to pause early voting on the state’s redistricting referendum or answer questions about the legality of the steps taken to amend the constitution.
Judge Patrick Yeatts said in court that because the constitutional amendment process is already underway, it’s not appropriate for him to intervene. The court order will be submitted by Wednesday, he said.
An hour after Yeatts announced his decision, the attorney who represented the city said in an interview that he doesn’t plan to appeal the ruling and urged all localities to carry out early voting as scheduled. Although Lynchburg didn’t see the win it hoped for now, he said, there’s a battle ahead at the polls and in post-election litigation.
“The court declined to answer and instead dismissed the action on essentially ripeness, saying that we couldn’t ask the questions until after the elections are over,” said attorney Tim Anderson, who represented the city.
Meanwhile, two appeals are pending in the Virginia Supreme Court related to the redistricting referendum, which would enable Democrats in the General Assembly to redraw congressional lines before November’s midterms with an eye toward knocking out four of the state’s five Republican U.S. House members. The first appeal stems from a January ruling by the Tazewell County Circuit Court that sought to halt the redistricting effort, finding that it ran afoul of the state constitution on procedural grounds. The second stems from another ruling in Tazewell County that specifically told state officials to stop preparing for the referendum.
Lynchburg’s case sought “judicial clarification of the City’s and its General Registrar’s legal duties and obligations in administering the April 21, 2026 constitutional referendum” in light of that shifting legal landscape, according to court documents. It also asked the judge for “temporary injunctive relief” in the city — meaning a pause on election preparation and execution. Yeatts heard arguments from Anderson and the defense in an emergency hearing Thursday, and no additional arguments were made Monday when Yeatts denied both requests.
The attorney general’s office represented the three defendants named in the case: Commissioner of Elections Steven Koski, the state Board of Elections and the state Department of Elections.
“Today the Office of the Attorney General stood up in court to protect the right to vote. The Lynchburg Circuit Court’s decision reinforces our position since the beginning — this election was properly called and will proceed as scheduled,” the office released in a statement Monday.
Virginians for Fair Elections, an intervening party in the case, also issued a press release Monday, which reads, in part, “Republicans have tried again and again to stop Virginians from having their say — and again, that effort has failed.”
Early voting on the referendum is scheduled to begin Friday.
‘We’re out of time’
Anderson, a former Republican state delegate from Virginia Beach, said in an interview Thursday that the Lynchburg case would likely be appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court regardless of the judge’s ruling. Monday, his outlook changed.
“There’s no next steps. I mean, we have an election on Friday. I’m not going to have a final order until Wednesday. I can’t springboard up to the Supreme Court on Wednesday and expect that they’re going to hear some kind of a case on Thursday,” he said. “We’re out of time.”
Anderson said questions remain regarding what he calls the “completely blatant illegal election” — specifically in relation to the application of the Tazewell injunction, a 90-day buffer window for voting called for in the state constitution, and other statutory and constitutional requirements.
Those concerns weren’t “dispositively dismissed” by Yeatts, Anderson said. “What the court essentially said is that all of the complaints about whether there’s constitutional violations — everything that we’ve raised in this case — have to be raised after the election is completed. … That is when ripeness occurs for challenges to be made. So that’s not the result, obviously, the city wanted, but it also doesn’t take away the ability for the city or others to raise issues after the election is completed,” he added.
In the meantime, Anderson said, local registrars “have to do the election as best you can with what you have.”
He spread that message in a social media post Monday: “Local officials are bound to follow existing state law unless and until a court rules otherwise.”
He specifically addressed “any counties that previously passed resolutions declining to proceed” with the election in the post, and he encouraged them to “reverse course.” Last month, Spotsylvania and Patrick counties passed resolutions to bar their registrars from administering early voting for the redistricting referendum. Anderson had initially championed the move as an effort to force a court decision ahead of the election, but said in the Monday interview that his advice now is that “supervisors have to follow the law as it’s written.”
“The constitutional questions remain. They will be litigated. But for now, the election proceeds,” he wrote in the social media post.
What does the ruling mean for the state?
Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick County, wrote in a Monday press release that the Republicans’ fight isn’t over at the court or grassroots levels.
“The court has preserved our constitutional claims, and we will fight them, but that fight comes later. The fight for today is at the ballot box,” he said.
From when early voting starts on Friday to Election Day on April 21, Virginia voters can choose to approve or reject the constitutional amendment that would redraw the state’s congressional districts in favor of Democratic candidates.
Future legal action by Republicans will likely depend on the outcome of the election, said Steven Emmert, a retired appellate lawyer from Virginia Beach and former publisher of a Virginia appellate news website.
“If the referendum takes place, and the result is that the ‘no’ votes win a majority, then there’s probably nothing to do, because you have to be aggrieved before you can sue,” he said. “If the voters say ‘yes,’ then, in theory, there could be lawsuits to invalidate it … and claim that the referendum was improper.”
In the meantime, he said, other jurisdictions can take heed of the outcome of Lynchburg’s case, but they aren’t bound by it. Yeatts’ ruling doesn’t carry any precedential weight because it came from a circuit court and not a higher court, he said.
Lynchburg’s case emerged in a relatively sparse legal landscape, Emmert added.
“There’s not a lot of case law that interprets attempts at the last minute — or the next-to-last minute, even — to enjoin a coming election of some sort,” he said. “It’s not as though they have a wealth of case law that they can draw upon to say, ‘Here’s how the courts have evaluated this kind of case in the past, so we now know how to evaluate it.’”
What does the ruling mean for Lynchburg?
Early voting will run “business as usual” in Lynchburg, said city council member Jacqueline Timmer. She introduced the resolution that initiated the city’s case, seeking clarity amid conflicting and limited guidance regarding the referendum.
“We came to the court for answers; we got the answer of what we need to do right now as a municipality,” she said after Yeatts ruled on Monday.
Patricia Jones, the city’s registrar, said her office will follow state code and start early voting on Friday.
“I’m not really going to comment on any details of the case, other than to say that we are just thankful that the judge gave a ruling today, and we will continue to move forward serving the citizens of the city of Lynchburg,” she said. Monday was her first day as registrar following the retirement of Dan Pense, who was included in the city’s lawsuit as a necessary party.
“The registrar’s office is a decidedly non-political office. They have nothing to do with politics; they just want to run an election,” said Philip Baker, the attorney who represented Pense. He added that because the state Department of Elections is prohibited by the Tazewell ruling from preparing for the referendum, the registrar’s office may face some challenges but can still carry out the task.
“Perfect is the enemy of good,” Baker said. “This won’t be a perfect election anywhere. But they’re going to do well, and they’re going to run the election.”
Both Pense and Jones testified Thursday that the Department of Elections had yet to approve a new polling place in Lynchburg’s fourth ward, provide up-to-date voter data or open the survey that allows the city to certify the accuracy tests of its voting machines — among other tasks needed to conduct an election as normal. Like other registrars across the state, Jones said she can work with what she has to administer the referendum.
Vice Mayor Curt Diemer said Monday that Yeatts did provide some clarity, but “it’s an answer that doesn’t provide us the immediate relief we were looking for.” Diemer said the city must now administer — and pay around $100,000 to do so — a referendum that violates the state constitution, which he took an oath to uphold when he became a council member.
“This will violate not just my oath but my conscience. This is clearly an illegal election,” he said.
Council member Marty Misjuns said that, in the path to stop redistricting in Virginia, it’s time to focus on the vote ahead.
“Vote ‘no.’ That’s the final word,” he said.
