The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday that Democratic lawmakers violated the state constitution when they fast-tracked a redistricting referendum onto the ballot, and in doing so, the court rendered meaningless a voter-approved measure that Democrats had spent more than $64 million to pass. The decision wiped out a congressional map that could have handed the party as many as four additional U.S. House seats heading into November's midterm elections.
The ruling landed as a 4-3 decision. And the price tag landed even harder.
Virginians for Fair Elections, the main pro-redistricting group, raised north of $64 million to push the measure across the finish line, the New York Post reported. Nearly $40 million of that total came from an outside spending group aligned with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The pro-redistricting campaign outspent the opposition 10 to 1 on television ads alone, according to Washington Post analysis cited in the report. All of it, every dollar, every ad buy, every door knock, now amounts to nothing.
The court's majority found that the Democratic-led legislature put the constitutional amendment authorizing mid-decade redistricting on the ballot without following the state's required amendment process. Virginia's constitution demands that a proposed amendment pass the legislature twice, with a House of Delegates election in between, giving voters the chance to weigh in on the lawmakers who support or oppose the change.
Democrats skipped that step. The General Assembly voted for the first time to propose the constitutional amendment on October 31, 2025, Newsmax reported, citing the majority opinion. By that point, early voting for the intervening election had already begun, meaning voters had no meaningful opportunity to factor the amendment into their choices at the ballot box.
Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, writing for the majority, did not mince words. AP News reported that Kelsey wrote:
"This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void."
In a separate passage from the opinion, Kelsey explained the procedural problem in plain terms. Early voters, he wrote, "unknowingly forfeited their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the Constitution by not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting." The court's redistricting rulings continue a pattern of judicial pushback against attempts to redraw maps outside normal channels, a dynamic also visible in recent Supreme Court redistricting decisions reshaping the 2026 House map.
The ruling means Virginia will keep the congressional map that has been in place since the 2022 elections. The proposed replacement would have shifted the state's delegation from a 6-5 split to as much as 10-1 in Democrats' favor, the Washington Examiner reported.
Conservative commentators did not let the spending figure pass without comment. Dustin Grage, a conservative columnist, wrote on social media:
"The funniest part about the court's ruling that Virginia's map is unconstitutional garbage is that the Democrats burned $64M just to get it thrown out."
Steve Guest, a conservative commentator, put the number even higher, writing that "Democrats incinerated nearly $70 million on an unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme in Virginia." The discrepancy between the $64 million and $70 million figures is unresolved in available reporting; the lower number tracks to the amount raised by Virginians for Fair Elections specifically.
The scale of the spending makes the outcome all the more notable. Democrats did not lose a close fight over public opinion. They won the referendum, voters narrowly approved the measure earlier this year. They lost because their own lawmakers cut a constitutional corner that the state's highest court would not ignore. Courts have struck down redistricting efforts from both parties in recent cycles, including the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of Louisiana's race-based congressional map.
Hakeem Jeffries, who was heavily involved in the redistricting push, called the ruling an "undemocratic action" and said Democrats would not accept it quietly.
"We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision. No matter what it takes, House Democrats will win in November so we can help rescue this nation from the extremism being unleashed by Donald Trump and Republicans."
That framing, casting a state Supreme Court's enforcement of its own constitution as "undemocratic", is worth pausing on. The court did not block voters from having their say. It found that lawmakers denied voters a constitutionally guaranteed step in the process before putting the question to them. Jeffries' characterization treats the procedural safeguard itself as the problem.
Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin offered a different read. He said Gov. Abigail Spanberger and "Democrats in Richmond knowingly violated our constitution to disenfranchise millions of Virginians." President Trump weighed in as well, writing on Truth Social: "Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia." The ruling fits a broader pattern of courts policing redistricting overreach, a pattern that has also played out in the Supreme Court's decision to keep the Texas congressional map intact for 2026.
The Virginia decision does not exist in a vacuum. Republicans have redrawn maps in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Florida, and Tennessee, changes that could carve out roughly 10 additional seats for the party in 2026. Republicans are also eyeing new maps in Louisiana and South Carolina. Democrats, meanwhile, made gains with a Democratic-friendly gerrymander in California.
The Virginia map was supposed to be the Democrats' answer, a single-state play that could have netted four GOP-held seats and helped the party claw back the House majority. Instead, it became the most expensive failed redistricting effort in recent memory.
Republicans helped bankroll the legal challenge that produced Friday's ruling. The Washington Free Beacon reported that the court found Democrats illegally placed the redistricting referendum on the April 21 ballot, making the result void. The 4-3 split on the bench suggests the legal question was contested, but the majority's reasoning was grounded in the text of Virginia's own constitution, not in partisan preference.
The court ruling was not the only blow to Virginia Democrats last week. On Wednesday, two days before the redistricting decision, the FBI raided the office of state Sen. Louise Lucas in Portsmouth, Virginia, as part of an ongoing investigation. Sources familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital that the probe is examining possible corruption related to a marijuana dispensary business Lucas owns.
A spokesperson for Lucas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The investigation's scope and status remain unclear, and no charges have been announced.
GOP strategist Christian Martinez responded to a social media post from Lucas promoting merchandise with the slogan "Ten F***ing One", a reference to the 10-1 congressional split the new map was designed to produce. Martinez wrote: "Tough luck, @SenLouiseLucas, merch just got Supreme Court'd straight to the clearance rack." He added: "Maybe try 'Zero F***ing Wins' next time." The internal dynamics of courts shaping political outcomes have drawn increasing scrutiny, as seen in leaked Supreme Court memos revealing internal battles over the shadow docket.
Journalist Chuck Ross also weighed in on Lucas, writing: "I guess it's fitting that her initials are LLL."
Jeffries says Democrats are "exploring all options" to reverse the ruling. What those options are remains an open question. The Virginia Supreme Court has spoken on the constitutional issue. Whether Democrats attempt a new legislative path, pursue federal litigation, or simply absorb the loss and compete on the existing map will shape the party's midterm strategy in one of the most competitive states in the country.
The existing map gives Virginia a 6-5 Republican-leaning split. Democrats needed the new lines to make the math work for a House majority. Without them, the party's path narrows considerably, and the $64 million spent to widen it bought nothing but a constitutional rebuke.
Several questions remain unanswered. The exact constitutional provision the court cited, the full scope of the FBI's investigation into Lucas, and the identity of the Jeffries-aligned spending group that poured nearly $40 million into the effort are all details that have not been fully disclosed.
What is clear is the bottom line: Virginia Democrats tried to shortcut their own state constitution, spent a fortune doing it, and a state court held them to the rules they swore to uphold. Sixty-four million dollars is a lot of money to learn a lesson most citizens already know, the rules apply to everyone, even when you're sure you're on the right side.
