The U.S. Supreme Court voted May 15 to reject a request from Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones to restore the redistricting amendment that was voted on and approved April 21 in a statewide referendum. The request from Jones came after the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the redistricting amendment May 8 — in which Virginians voted for a 10-1 Democrat-favored congressional map that would replace the current 6-5 map in time for the 2026 midterm elections.
Virginia’s attempts to redraw congressional maps come amidst a wave of redistricting in states across the country — with eight states successfully implementing new congressional maps, and several others currently attempting to. Traditionally, states redraw their congressional district maps every 10 years, in congruence with the national census. However, in the last year, several have attempted mid-cycle redistricting in efforts to create a partisan advantage for the 2026 midterms.
Some states, such as Virginia and California, have pursued their redistricting efforts through statewide referendums, while others, such as Texas and Florida, have passed laws in their state legislatures authorizing mid-decade redistricting. Similar to Virginia, the majority of redistricting attempts across the country have created controversy and faced legal challenges.
Here is a closer look at each states’ redistricting efforts and how they compare to Virginia.
Virginia
Virginia faced greater difficulty than California or Texas when redrawing its congressional maps for several reasons. First, Virginia was a politically divided state at the time of the introduction of the constitutional amendment in October, with a Republican governor and a Democratic General Assembly. Thus, a law passing through the state legislature and being signed by the governor to allow legislative redrawing — as happened in Texas and Florida — would have been unlikely.
Second, Virginia’s redistricting efforts were more difficult because of the existence of the Virginia Redistricting Commission — a bipartisan committee created by the General Assembly in 2020 tasked with redrawing congressional maps every 10 years. Therefore, Virginia needed to pass the constitutional amendment before the legislature had the power to redistrict.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-34) explained the necessity of the constitutional amendment to the Virginia Mercury Jan. 16. He said the national context has changed since the adoption of the Virginia Redistricting Commission.
“We worked hard. We worked diligently to establish a fair bipartisan redistricting process, but we don’t operate in a vacuum today,” Surovell said.
However, many Republican members of the General Assembly were critical of the amendment. Del. Lee Ware (R-72) told WHRO Public Media Oct. 28 that it would create “gerrymandered” districts.
“The purpose of this unprecedented special session during an election is to hitch Virginia, belatedly, to the pell-mell bandwagon, to redistrict, or to speak more honestly, to gerrymander, the Commonwealth’s electoral districts,” Ware said.
The Tazewell County Circuit Court proved to be a hurdle for Virginia’s redistricting efforts when Judge Jack S. Hurley ruled Jan. 27 that the General Assembly did not follow the proper timeline for passing a proposal. Hurley agreed with Republicans that early voting for the November 2025 House of Delegates election had already begun before the amendment received its second legislative approval as millions of Virginians voted early.
Virginia Democrats appealed Hurley’s decision and the Virginia Supreme Court took up the appeal. The Court ruled the referendum could proceed as it decided on the referendum’s constitutionality.
The statewide redistricting amendment referendum passed with 51.7 percent of the vote, but the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the amendment May 8 on procedural grounds.
The decision said that the amendment was not advanced through the General Assembly in accordance with the Virginia Constitution, which requires an intervening election between the first and second approvals of a constitutional amendment. In the opinion, the justices emphasized the importance of the intervening general election in increasing voters’ ability to fully understand the amendment and understand how their local candidates for the General Assembly might vote for it before voting in the House of Delegates.
Several Democratic Virginia lawmakers expressed their frustration at the timing of the decision, which came after 3 million Virginians had already voted to pass the proposed map in the referendum. In addition, Surovell argued in a statement following the decision that it upended precedent set for centuries on the power of a statewide vote.
“For the first time in the 250-year history of our Commonwealth, our Supreme Court has set aside the results of a statewide election,” Surovell said.
By contrast, Republican lawmakers in the state have emphasized the importance of the Virginia Supreme Court upholding the Commonwealth’s constitution. Similar to the Virginia Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Rep. Terry Kilgore (R-45), Virginia House of Delegates minority leader, explained the importance of the intervening election following the May 8 decision.
"Today's ruling establishes once again that the Constitution of Virginia means what it says. The rule of law requires that Virginians have an opportunity to review a Constitutional Amendment before they vote for the House of Delegates in a meaningful way,” Kilgore said. “You cannot violate the Constitution to amend the Constitution."
While Virginia’s efforts in attempting to redistrict were similar to California’s in that both called for a statewide referendum vote, it was uniquely brought down by an interpretation of procedural rules within the Commonwealth by the Virginia Supreme Court.
The amendment was further put to rest by the U.S. Supreme Court in a May 15 decision.
Texas
Virginia was not the first state to attempt to redistrict, and the recent wave of redistricting attempts began July 2025 in Texas — though in Texas, redistricting efforts proved successful. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced the agenda of the state legislature’s special session July 9, which included a rare mid-cycle redrawing of the congressional districts. According to the Dallas Tribune, Abbott agreed to include redistricting on the special session’s agenda after a phone call with President Donald Trump.
In contrast to Virginia, Texas did not use a bipartisan redistricting commission and the state legislature already had broad power to redistrict, making their process swifter than Virginia’s, with no constitutional amendment needed.
Abbott wrote in his proclamation July 9 that redistricting was necessary to address “constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice” after the Justice Department sent a letter July 7 claiming that Texas’ four majority-minority districts were drawn unconstitutionally. In an interview on FOX News Aug. 4, Abbott said that the U.S. Supreme Court determined “there is nothing illegal” about drawing districts to a majority party’s advantage. Abbott was likely referring to the 2019 Supreme Court decision Rucho v. Common Cause which ruled that federal courts have no legal authority to strike down political gerrymandering.
James Talarico (D-50), Texas state representative and Texas senatorial candidate, criticized the redrawn maps as creating less accountability between legislators and their voters.
“I know that sounds dramatic, but … now by redrawing the political maps, they’re trying to insulate themselves from the will of the voters,” Talarico said in an appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill” program July 29.
The Texas state legislature voted to approve the new map — the House approved it Aug. 20 and the Senate followed Aug. 23 — and Abbott signed it into law Aug. 29. Similar to what happened in Virginia with the Tazewell County Circuit Court, an El Paso District Court blocked the map Nov. 18 in the case Greg Abbott, et al. v. League of United Latin American Citizens, et al. The plaintiffs of the case argued that the maps were drawn to suppress the voting power of Latino and Black communities. However, the map was then officially cleared for use in the 2026 midterms by the U.S. Supreme Court April 27 in a 6-3 decision.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the map to stay was based in part on there being a lack of sufficient evidence in the case that the redistricting was racially based. The decision argued that this meant it was not in violation of the Voting Rights Act, and that it was instead politically motivated. Additionally, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito expressed concerns in his concurring opinion over a lower District Court interfering with the election rules of a national election too close to when the election would be taking place.
“The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
Mayes Middleton (R-11), Texas state senator and attorney general candidate, expressed excitement for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision and for the map’s potential impact in helping to elect more Republican candidates to Congress.
“The Big Beautiful Map stands!” Middleton posted April 27 on the social media platform X. “I’m proud to have fought to make this law and now let’s go elect those 5 additional Republican Congressional seats we drew!”
California
In response to the redistricting in Texas, lawmakers in California moved quickly to redraw the congressional districts in their states to create an advantage for Democratic candidates in the 2026 midterms. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) emphasized at the redistricting bill signing Aug. 21 that countering the Texas redistricting in anticipation for the midterms was the main factor that inspired California’s own efforts.
“We’re responding to what occurred in Texas,” Newsom said. “We’re neutralizing what occurred, and we’re giving the American people a fair chance, because when all things are equal, we’re all playing by the same rules.”
While their efforts had different outcomes, Virginia and California’s legal processes to accomplish their re-drawings closely mirrored each other. California traditionally had an independent redistricting commission that established the new congressional districts every 10 years. However, Californians voted in approval of California Proposition 50 in a statewide referendum Nov. 4, which bypassed the independent redistricting commission and allowed the use of legislatively drawn maps. The change is temporary and the maps will remain in place until the next census in 2030.
Similar to the redistricting in both Texas and Virginia, California’s redrawing faced several legal challenges. California Republicans submitted an injunction appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court Jan. 20, but the Court denied the injunction and declined to block the redistricting. While litigation continues in both California and Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to allow both redrawn maps to be used in the 2026 midterm elections.
By contrast, Virginia’s will not be used for the coming midterms.
Looking ahead
Many other states are currently pursuing their own processes of redistricting, and as partisan battles continue across the country, states will face a changed legal landscape after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais et al. The decision reinterpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and limited when race can be used to draw districts. Given the decision, an analysis by Issue One found that the timing of the decision means it is unlikely that many more states will have enough time to redraw their maps before midterms, without running into legal and administrative issues so close to the elections.
However, the analysis states that some states may still be able to complete their new maps. States with unusually late candidate filing deadlines would still be able to create new maps before the midterms — Florida was the first to do so, with Gov. Ron Desantis (R) signing a new map into law May 4 that dismantled two minority-majority districts. Several other state legislatures legally pushed back their filing deadlines after the decision to redraw maps — Tennessee has been the first to do this, with Gov. Bill Lee (R) signing new maps into law and extending candidate filing deadlines to May 15. Similarly, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) pushed the states’ candidate filing deadlines to Aug. 7.
While the Callais decision has come too late to affect the majority of states’ ability to redistrict before the 2026 midterms, it has opened the door to create greater impacts in future elections. The reinterpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the decision will make it easier for states to redraw their maps to eliminate minority-majority districts, and would leave challengers to the new maps without legal ground to stand on.
These future impacts are already beginning to be seen — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has announced that the state would not be redrawing maps before the 2026 midterms, but instead will create a new map in a June 17 special session for use in the 2028 federal elections.
Read More
Jeri Seidman aims to rebuild trust as faculty representative to the Board
By Lucia Gambacini | YesterdayIn her role as faculty representative to the Board, Seidman is a non-voting member who provides the faculty perspective to Board members during open and closed sessions of meetings.
Spanberger vetoes repeal on collective bargaining ban — faculty and legislators weigh in
By Edward Christopher | YesterdayThe Cavalier Daily spoke with University faculty members and legislators on the implications of the veto.
UJC details 16 finalized cases, 24 pending cases in Spring 2026 Statistics Report
By Melody Yuan | 2 days agoAs of May 18, there are 24 pending cases, which the UJC will process in the fall because, according to the report, the UJC only operates during the regular undergraduate academic session.
