In a unanimous one-sentence order issued Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones’ application to stay the Virginia Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling: “The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is denied.”
One week earlier, the state Supreme Court voted 4–3 to strike down the Democrats’ redrawn congressional map, which party leaders had hoped would secure a 10–1 advantage in the state’s House delegation and potentially net as many as four additional seats in the 2026 midterms. Although the current 6–5 split still favors Democrats, the ruling significantly strengthened Republicans’ chances of retaining their House majority.
Democrats were indignant because Virginia voters had narrowly approved the new map in a statewide referendum in April. As Axios described it, Democrats “fell into a state of anguish.” One lawmaker responded to their request for comment in a one-word text message: “F***.”
The issue was not with the new map itself, but with the legislative process used to advance the measure, which the court found had violated the state constitution. In its ruling, the court stated that “this constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.”
It remains unclear why Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones believed the U.S. Supreme Court would intervene to overturn the state court’s ruling, particularly given the narrow constitutional questions at issue and the high court’s longstanding reluctance to second-guess state court interpretations of state law. More likely, despite the unfavorable odds, the appeal represented a final procedural avenue — a last-ditch effort to preserve Democrats’ redistricting gains.
In a statement following the Supreme Court’s denial, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones went on offense. He framed the decision as part of a broader national effort by Republicans and conservative courts to consolidate political power ahead of the 2026 midterms. Jones accused President Donald Trump, Republican-led legislatures, and the judiciary of systematically undermining voting rights, particularly for black voters and communities of color, arguing that recent redistricting battles across multiple states reflected a coordinated strategy to entrench Republican control in Congress. He characterized both the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling and the nation’s highest court’s refusal to intervene as direct assaults on democratic representation and the will of Virginia voters.
Jones also sought to cast the failed appeal as part of a larger political and electoral fight rather than merely a legal defeat. Emphasizing that more than three million Virginians voted on the referendum, he argued that the state court had “contorted” constitutional language to invalidate the outcome of what he described as a lawful democratic process. While acknowledging the Supreme Court’s decision left the ruling intact, Jones vowed to continue the fight politically, pledging to campaign aggressively for Democratic candidates and framing the upcoming midterm elections as a referendum on what he described as Republican efforts to “stack the deck” in their favor.
For her part, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger brushed aside the clear constitutional violations by state Democrats. Instead, she portrayed the ruling as a coordinated effort between the Virginia Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to “nullify an election” for Republicans’ political benefit.
That framing, however, overlooks one inconvenient detail: the Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous, backed by both conservative and liberal justices alike — even the far-left Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In a Friday night post about the decision, Professor Jacobson remarked that the Virginia Democrats’ attempt to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling was “so bad that not even KBJ went along. When you are libs and you’ve lost even KBJ, you know your legal arguments sucked big league.”
Professor Jacobson closed his post with a rhetorical question: “So when will the attorneys who brought this frivolous application be disbarred, like [what] happened to Republican lawyers who lost the 2020 election cases?”
While Democrats will continue to argue that Republicans are putting their thumbs on the scale ahead of the midterms, other voters will likely view the situation quite differently. During the campaign, when specifically asked whether she would pursue redistricting efforts in Virginia, Spanberger said she had “no plans” to do so.
Spanberger has presided over one of the most aggressive bait-and-switches in electoral history. She campaigned as a moderate and turned into Saul Alinsky on her first day in office.
[While a full discussion of her administration’s brazen power grab is beyond the scope of this post, I previously covered the flurry of bills introduced in just the first 72 hours in a January post titled, “Virginia on Fire: Insane Legislative Blitz on Tax Hikes, Sentencing Rollbacks.”]
Given the backlash already forming around those policies, I fully expect her administration’s massive overreach to be presented as a cautionary tale in Republican campaign ads this fall.
Spanberger and Jones have clearly chosen to double down. While that strategy may energize the activist base, it risks alienating the broader electorate — particularly independent voters who still expect constitutional rules to apply equally regardless of party affiliation. The Supreme Court’s unanimous rejection of their appeal only reinforced the perception that this was not a close legal call or some partisan conspiracy, but a fundamentally flawed process from the beginning.
Their refusal to acknowledge that reality and their continued framing of every institutional setback as political sabotage could shape not only Virginia’s midterm landscape, but the credibility of their broader “defense of democracy” message moving forward.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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