The Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday struck down a voter-approved constitutional amendment authorizing partisan gerrymandering of the state’s congressional districts, ruling 4-3 that the legislature violated procedural requirements when proposing the change.
In a majority opinion authored by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, the court noted that the General Assembly’s October 31, 2025 vote to advance the amendment came after early voting in the intervening House of Delegates election had already begun, violating Article XII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution. That provision requires a “general election” between the legislature’s two required votes on a proposed amendment.
By the time lawmakers acted, roughly 1.3 million Virginians—about 40 percent of all 2025 voters—had already cast ballots. The court rejected the Commonwealth’s contention that “election” refers only to Election Day, holding that the term encompasses “the combined actions of voters casting ballots and officers of election receiving those votes.”
The amendment, narrowly approved by voters last month, would have temporarily suspended Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting commission and authorized lawmakers to redraw congressional maps mid-decade. A proposed replacement map would have shifted Virginia’s 11-member House delegation from a 6-5 split to a projected 10-1 advantage. The 2021 court-ordered maps will remain in place for the November 2026 congressional elections.
Chief Justice Powell, joined by Justices Mann and Fulton, dissented, arguing the majority’s expansive definition of “election” conflicts with both Virginia statutes and federal law, which treat elections as single-day events.
The decision lands amid an escalating mid-decade redistricting battle. Virginia Democrats had advanced the amendment as a counter to Republican-led mid-decade gerrymandering in states like Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis recently unveiled a map drawing four additional GOP-friendly seats following the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act.
