Gov. Abigail Spanberger issued her unequivocal opposition Monday to a suggestion floated by Democrats that the Supreme Court of Virginia bench be dissolved to resurrect a push to redraw the state’s congressional maps after the effort was struck down by the court Friday.
When asked by a reporter if she supports “getting rid of the supreme court for redistricting,” she responded with a simple but firm “no,” while leaving an event on Monday.
The idea began making its rounds among Democrats in Virginia and in Congress over the weekend after the state Supreme Court ruled in a split 4-3 decision Friday morning to nullify an effort to redraw Virginia’s congressional maps to favor Democrats in 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 districts.
In the state supreme court opinion, written by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, the court found that the legislative process employed to advance the redistricting referendum violated Article XII, Section 1, of the state constitution. It said that the constitutional violation “incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.”
The court’s decision came weeks after voters approved the redistricting referendum by a 2.9-point margin.
Supporters of the redistricting effort called it necessary, after President Donald Trump told conservative-led states to change their congressional maps in favor of GOP candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. A number of Republican-led states, including Texas, North Carolina and Missouri, have redrawn their maps to give Republicans an advantage in picking up seats in the midterm elections. Democratic states, including California, have done the same for their party in response.
According to a report by The New York Times, some Virginia Democrats had floated “an audacious and possibly far-fetched idea,” in conversation with U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries after Friday’s ruling, to replace the Virginia Supreme Court justices and relitigate the case to get their preferred result.
In order to do so, the General Assembly would need to convene, pass a law to lower the justices’ retirement age to 54 — which could clear out the court, persuade the governor to sign the bill, elect a bench of seven new justices and rehear the case well before the August 4 primary.
AG Jones requests a stay from SCOTUS
Attorney General Jay Jones filed an emergency application for a stay of the Virginia Supreme Court ruling to the Supreme Court of the United States on Monday, as he seeks to appeal the ruling to the federal court.
Rae Pickett, spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, argued that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court of Virginia “contorted the law to fit their political agenda, and overturned an election where three million Virginians cast their votes.”
“Meanwhile, Republican states around the nation are in the process of redrawing their maps, without any input from the electorate, to deliver on Donald Trump’s demand that he is ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress. Virginians deserve better,” she said.
Jones’ vowed after the ruling Friday that this office would evaluate “all legal pathways.”
In his application for a stay, Jones wrote that the state supreme court “overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by ordering the Commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Jones argued that the stay be granted and the eventual appeal be taken up by the Supreme Court of the United States because the state court, he said, is “deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.”
The first of those issues being, he said, that the state supreme court misinterpreted the Virginia Constitution on a “grave misreading of federal law,” which fixes a single day for the “election” of U.S. Representatives and Delegates to Congress. The second issue, he argued, is that the state supreme court rejected the Virginia Constitution’s definition of “election” to adopt its own meaning.
A constitutional amendment must pass the General Assembly twice, with an intervening election between those two votes, before it goes to the voters in a referendum. The state supreme court based its split 4-3 ruling on whether 45 days of early voting is considered part of the required intervening election. The four justices determined that 45 days of early voting does indeed count as part of the required intervening election.
“The Supreme Court of Virginia has already ruled that Virginia Democrats violated the Virginia Constitution,” House of Delegates Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, said in response to Jones’ emergency application for a stay. “Now, rather than accept that ruling, they are running to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn it. It’s time to stop the legal games, pass a budget for Virginians, and focus on the November midterms.”
Kilgore was a plaintiff in the Tazewell Circuit Court case against the redistricting effort. That court decision was appealed by Jones to the state Supreme Court, which handed down its ruling on Friday.
The General Assembly first passed the constitutional amendment on Oct. 31 by gaveling in the 2024 special session, which had never been adjourned. That Oct. 31 passage took place amid early voting for the 2025 general election, which had begun in September. The second passage of the constitutional amendment took place Jan. 19. Both of the General Assembly votes were solidly along party lines.
