Today, the Virginia Supreme Court threw out the votes of 3.1 million Virginians who voted in April’s referendum. It would have helped restore fairness to the country’s congressional maps. In a partisan ruling, four Republican appointees on the court undermined our very democracy.
This must serve as a brutally serious wake-up call: Republican-controlled courts are willing to nullify an election if they do not like the results. The implications go well beyond Virginia to the 2026 and 2028 elections.
With rightwing majorities scrambling to gerrymander maps in the wake of the Callais decision, four of the Virginia Supreme Court’s justices helped Donald Trump maintain control of Congress.
There will be many questions and postmortems about what happened.
Here is what I know:
Legal experts saw a viable path for Virginia’s legislature to level the playing field in response to the redistricting arms race Trump ignited. Legislative leaders were able to send the question of redistricting to Virginians, because there were enough votes in the legislature. Unfortunately, there aren’t yet enough votes on the Court.
As we see again and again, the most consequential events in our country continue to be an interplay between state legislatures wielding their immense power and the courts reacting.
The solution is to convince more people of our vision for America and the fact that the other side is working to destroy it. It may not be a straight path, but if we keep winning in states, eventually they will lose.
– Daniel Squadron,
Co-founder, The States Project
