Dems Ask SCOTUS to Halt VA Ruling      05/12 06:19

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats on Monday filed an emergency appeal with the 
U.S. Supreme Court seeking to halt a Virginia ruling invalidating a ballot 
measure that would have given their party an additional four winnable U.S. 
House seats.

   The move came after the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a 
constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month. The 4-3 
state court decision found that the Democratic-controlled legislature 
improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early 
voting had begun in the Virginia's general election last fall.

   Democrats argued unsuccessfully that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that, 
even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election 
Day itself.

   The appeal is the latest twist in the nation's mid-decade redistricting 
competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging 
Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a 
recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act.

   "The Court overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by 
ordering the Commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional 
districts that the people rejected," wrote lawyers for Virginia Democrats and 
the state's Democratic Attorney General, Jay Jones. They added, "The 
irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia's decision is 
profound and immediate."

   The filing is a sign of Democratic desperation after the Virginia decision 
deprived them of four winnable House seats in the mid-decade redistricting race 
that President Donald Trump kicked off last year. Democrats are still favorites 
to recapture the House of Representatives, but their GOP rivals have claimed to 
have gained more than a dozen seats through redistricting. The voter-approved 
Virginia map would have partly offset that.

   Democrats are taking a legal long shot in asking the justices to reverse the 
Virginia court's ruling. The Supreme Court tries to avoid second-guessing state 
courts' interpretations of their own constitutions. In 2023, it turned down a 
request by North Carolina Republicans to overrule a state Supreme Court 
decision that blocked the GOP's congressional map.

   Politically, the appeal could help a party struggling to compete with 
Republicans in the unusual mid-decade redrawing of congressional boundaries by 
providing fodder for election-year messaging about a partisan Supreme Court. 
The court recently allowed Louisiana Republicans to proceed with redistricting 
after the justices struck down a majority Black district as an unconstitutional 
racial gerrymander.

   Democrats have been set on their heels because, days after the Virginia 
ballot measure passed, the Supreme Court's conservatives reversed decades of 
rulings and effectively neutered the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for 
Southern states to eliminate some majority Black districts and further pad 
Republican margins in Congress.

   The Virginia amendment had been launched long before that ruling. It was 
intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina 
and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the 
Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting 
scramble into a draw between the two parties.

   That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court's decision. The justices 
are appointed by the legislature, which has flipped between the two parties in 
recent decades, and the body is generally not seen as having a clear 
ideological bent.