Battle for the House runs through Virginia as court OKs high-stakes redistricting vote

In a crucial decision on Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a high-stakes referendum scheduled for April 21 on congressional redistricting can go forward.

It’s a victory for Democrats in Virginia, who are fast-tracking a proposed new congressional map that would give the competitive state up to four more left-leaning U.S. House districts in time for this year’s midterm elections.

Virginia is the latest battleground, with Florida on deck, in the ongoing crucial battle between President Donald Trump and Republicans versus Democrats to alter congressional maps ahead of November’s elections.

Republicans are defending their razor-thin House majority in the midterms, and Democrats need a net gain of just three seats to win back control of the chamber. That means the redistricting efforts in Virginia and other states may very well decide which party controls the House next year.

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But the proposed map in Virginia, which the Democrat-controlled legislature is expected to give final approval in the coming days, followed by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger signing it, still needs the approval of voters in the Commonwealth.

Republicans had challenged the validity of the referendum, arguing that Democrats had erred procedurally when the legislature approved amendments to the state Constitution. And last month, a lower court ruled in the GOP’s favor.

But the ruling by the state Supreme Court greenlights the ballot measure, which asks voters to give the legislature, rather than Virginia’s current non-partisan commission, redistricting power through the 2030 election.

“Today’s order is a huge win for Virginia voters,” Dan Gottlieb, spokesperson for Democrat-aligned Virginians for Fair Elections, said in a statement. “The Court made it clear that nothing in this case stops the April 21 referendum from moving forward and that Virginians will have the final say.”

Early voting on the referendum is scheduled to start on March 6.

Longtime Republican state lawmaker Terry Kilgore, looking ahead to the referendum vote, told reporters, “we’re going to make our case to Virginians that this is unfair. This is unprecedented. And, quite frankly it’s against the law we believe.”

Friday’s ruling on the referendum doesn’t mean the legal challenges are over. Democrats are still defending their ability to redraw the maps, and the state Supreme Court may schedule arguments in that case.

“Last October, democrats took an unprecedented step to illegally pass a constitutional amendment at the 11th hour. The judiciary agreed, and the Supreme Court has taken up and fast-tracked the case. Make no mistake, the rule of law will prevail,” Republican state Sen. Ryan McDougle, the Virginia Senate MInority Leader told Fox News Digital.

Republicans charge that the Democrats’ redistricting effort is an “unconstitutional power grab.”

Virginians for Fair Maps, a Republican-aligned group that opposes the redistricting push, has highlighted that “Virginians came together to pass bipartisan redistricting reform — a process that took the power to draw maps out of politicians’ hands. Now, politicians in Richmond want to undo that progress.”

And the Republican National Committee has called the Democrats’ push in Virginia a “power grab.”

But Democrats have countered that it’s a necessary step to balance out partisan gerrymandering already implemented in other states by the GOP.

Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, Trump last spring first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard of, mid-decade congressional redistricting.

The mission was simple: redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP’s razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.

Trump’s first target was Texas.

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When asked by reporters last summer about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map.

But Democratic state lawmakers, who broke quorum for two weeks as they fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill, energized Democrats across the country.

Among those leading the fight against Trump’s redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

California voters in November overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that temporarily sidetracked the left-leaning state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and returned the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.

That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw their maps.

The fight quickly spread beyond Texas and California.

Republican-controlled Missouri and Ohio, and swing state North Carolina, where the GOP dominates the legislature, have drawn new maps as part of the president’s push.

In blows to Republicans, a Utah district judge late last year rejected a congressional district map drawn up by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the midterms.

But Utah Republicans have appealed to the state Supreme Court to block a new court-ordered map for this year’s elections.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Indiana’s Senate in December defied Trump, shooting down a redistricting bill that had passed the state House. The showdown in the Indiana statehouse grabbed plenty of national attention.

Florida’s next up.

Two-term Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers in the GOP-dominated legislature are hoping to pick up an additional three to five right-leaning seats through a redistricting push during a special legislative session in April.

But the bid by DeSantis and Republicans in Tallahassee last week drew its first lawsuit, from a group aligned with Florida Democrats. The lawsuit contends that the governor and Secretary of State Cordy Byrd don’t have the legal authority to reshape election laws, after Byrd pushed back congressional qualifying dates from April to June.

Democrats in solidly blue Maryland are also pushing redistricting, which could result in one extra left-leaning congressional seat. But the effort, pushed by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore and green-lighted by state House Democrats, is facing opposition from Senate President Bill Ferguson, a fellow Democrat.

Lastly, Republicans in South Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas and New Hampshire, and Democrats in Illinois and Washington State are also exploring possible bids to redraw the maps.

Hovering over the redistricting wars is the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule in Louisiana v. Callais, a crucial case that may lead to the overturning of a key provision in the Voting Rights Act.

If the ruling goes the way of the conservatives on the high court, it could lead to the redrawing of a slew of majority-minority districts across the county, which would greatly favor Republicans.

But it is very much up in the air — when the court will rule, and what it will actually do.