Dems’ latest Virginia redistricting scheme draws mockery amid major court filing blunder
Democrats in Virginia apparently filed their redistricting appeal to the wrong Supreme Court, drawing even more mockery in a heated battle over the district lines of the state's congressional map.
Jason Miyares, the former attorney general of Virginia, led the criticism online on Tuesday, pointing to a previous mistake where Democrats spelled the commonwealth's name incorrectly on legal documents.
"Good news: Dems managed to spell Virginia correctly," Miyares said in a post to X. "Bad news: They sent their emergency application to SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) to the wrong court."
"Baby steps," the former Republican AG quipped.
Sure enough, Virginia legislators emblazoned their emergency petition with an address "to the Supreme Court of Virginia" instead of the highest U.S. court, according to an image of the document shared on social media by Miyares.
He was also one to point out on Friday Democrats' misspelling of the state as "Virgnia" rather than "Virginia" in their filing to the Supreme Court. In that same mistake-riddled document, they wrote "Sentator" instead of Senator.
Miyares' latest jab adds insult to injury as Democrats are still reeling from a Virginia Supreme Court decision that struck down a set of new maps designed to overwhelmingly favor their party in the November midterm elections. The post also highlights Republican glee at the foiled maps as Democrats hope to keep their gerrymandering push alive by advancing the issue to the Supreme Court (SCOTUS).
The new maps would have eliminated as many as four Republican-leaning districts.
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Virginia's highest court ruled late last week that Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger had improperly fast-tracked a constitutional amendment that temporarily undid state-level prohibitions on gerrymandering.
In particular, the court ruled that Spanberger’s redistricting push skirted requirements that any constitutional amendment must receive the approval of two separate sessions of the Virginia legislature before it can be put to a statewide referendum.
Most importantly, at least to the state court's decision, is that those sessions must be decisively separated by an election.
By the time the referendum reached consideration in the General Assembly last year, early voting for 2025 had already begun. This led Virginia's court to conclude the amendment’s consideration had not meaningfully been separated by a full election and therefore could not be upheld.
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Virginia is now asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on state-level laws, arguing that the court "impermissibly transgressed the ordinary bounds of judicial review."
It’s unclear when the matter may reach consideration before the U.S. Supreme Court.