‘Unconstitutional’: Court torpedoes Virginia’s biased redistricting election

The Democrats’ agenda in Virginia to take four more congressional seats away from Republicans and give them to Democrats, a plan they called “fairness,” has been torpedoed by a court ruling.

In their desperation to try to gain control of the House of Republicans in the fall election they want to gerrymander their state’s districts, making them look like spiders on a map, to take 10 of the state’s 11 seats.

The division right now is 6-5 for the Democrats, and the state voted on a constitutional amendment Tuesday to make the changes, leaving 49% of the population with just 9% of the congressional representation, an effort they call democracy.

UPDATE on referendum lawsuits: The Tazewell Circuit Court just ruled the referendum unconstitutional. The Judge entered an injunction blocking certification of the election & denied a motion to stay pending appeal. A final order will be entered once drafted, & it will be…

— Ken Cuccinelli II (@KenCuccinelli) April 22, 2026

Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s former attorney general and an expert on elections, announced Wednesday afternoon, “The Tazewell Circuit Court just ruled the referendum unconstitutional. The judge entered an injunction blocking certification of the election & denied a motion to stay pending appeal. A final order will be entered once drafted, & it will be immediately appealed.”

The “yes” vote has won Va’s redistricting referendum — but the legal fight is just beginning. Four Va Constitutional challenges are now teed up:
THREE challenges to the amendment process itself:
1⃣ First passage was invalid. The amendment was taken up during a special session…

— Ken Cuccinelli II (@KenCuccinelli) April 22, 2026

Cuccinelli explained that the legal fight was just starting.

“Four Va Constitutional challenges are now teed up: THREE challenges to the amendment process,” he said.

“First passage was invalid. The amendment was taken up during a special session convened in 2024 for budget purposes. The General Assembly’s own call to the Governor (under Art. IV, §6 and Art. V, §5) and its governing resolution (HJR 6001) limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred. A Tazewell County judge found.”

He continued “This action “void, ab initio.” Art. XII, §1 requires that after first passage, a proposed amendment be ‘referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.’ An election must intervene between first and second,” and he explained that didn’t happen.

“Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one. Art. XII, §1 requires the amendment be submitted to voters ‘not sooner than ninety days after final passage by the General Assembly.’ The timeline from second passage to the April 21 vote did not satisfy this requirement.”

Further, he said, the proposed maps are under challenge because the state requires “every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.”

BREAKING: A Virginia Circuit Court has just ruled yesterday’s redistricting vote UNCONSTITUTIONAL, and has issued an injunction BLOCKING the results from being certified, per @KenCuccinelli

This is BIG. It’s NOT over yet!

It’s very likely this will end up at the state… pic.twitter.com/KYJMQ8DEGF

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 22, 2026

When the vote was announced, it immediately was mocked by publications including Not the Bee, which charged, “Democracy! 51% of Virginia decides the other 49% only gets 9% of state’s representation in Congress.”

Further, the “fairness” claim actually, inexplicably and inaccurately, was in the text of the constitutional amendment, presented by Democrats, whose allegation was that it would only be fair in the state for the 49% who oppose them get only 9% of the representation. That ballot stated, “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional distrticts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections…”

The courts allowed the vote even though it was under court challenge already.

A report at the Federalist which explained, “Democrats and their well-heeled funders have won their rigged referendum to rig Virginia’s congressional maps, but the political boundary battle isn’t over yet.”

“Now come the court challenges, and that’s where the redistricting revisionists could lose their big win thanks to their unabashed manipulation of Virginia law.”

Jason Snead of Honest Elections Project, confirmed to the publication the Democrats have gone illegal “for a number of reasons.”

His group is involved in one of multiple lawsuits that were pending even as the courts allowed the election to move forward. The vote killed a previous amendment that established an independent commission charged with drawing districts, and gave “the Democrat-controlled legislature the authority to put in place its drunkenly partisan congressional maps redrawn mid-decade to grab more House seats in November’s midterms.”

Charles Blahous, of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told the publication the federal Constitution was not written to protect political parties.

In this situation, the program is, he said, the “absurd” contortion of the Democrats’ maps.

“Virginia’s constitution is quite explicit in its language requiring electoral districts to be ‘contiguous and compact.’ One look will tell you the maps don’t fit the bill,” the report aid.

Regarding compactness, based on the concept a voter should be able to vote in a district with people who live nearby, Blahous aid the Democrats’ maps miss the mark by a mile.

The legal actions already brought by the Republican National Committee, Virginia GOP and Virginia voters themselves, raise that problem.

That legal filing charges, “The plan splits Northern Virginia five ways and bizarrely stretches these districts hundreds of miles into the Shenandoah Valley, central Virginia, and Tidewater. That ensures that voices of downstate Virginians are cancelled by the DC suburbs — Washingtonians sending Washingtonians to Washington.”

Further the courts have been told that lawmakers illegally extended a “special session” of the legislature to adopt the Democrats’ agenda.

Under Virginia’s constitution, such amendment proposals must pass in two sessions of the legislature — with an intervening election. But in this case a special session began in 2024 and was extended in 2025 before Democrats added their redistricting plan to a session about the budget.

It was the state Supreme Court that allowed the election even though the agenda continues to face a long list of serious legal hurdles.

Snead said, “The Supreme Court of Virginia is going to have a chance to reject these maps, not for political or partisan reasons, but because the constitution and the laws of the state spell out how this is supposed to be done. Nobody gets to just brush those aside in the name of trying to amend the constitution for political power.”

WATCH: Even CNN is admitting how insane the Virginia gerrymander is….

“And just take a look at how this map is structured. What they do is they’ve taken the heavily Democratic areas in the northern area of Virginia, and they’ve created five separate districts that basically… pic.twitter.com/pA7nvlnaWL

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 21, 2026

Dems will now control 90% of districts in a state they only won by 5%

For the sake of “fairness” pic.twitter.com/gDgYrtr1vf

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 22, 2026

51% of Virginia told 49% they only deserve 9% of the Congressional Districts.
Congratulations to Democrats Against Democracy. pic.twitter.com/xv4skL3rJi

— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) April 22, 2026

‘Battle isn’t over yet’: Experts warn Virginia’s biased redistricting violates state constitution

Virginia passes ‘egregiously’ gerrymandered redistricting map favoring Democrats