By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Virginia Democrats to revive a voting map designed to help their party wrest control of the U.S. House of Representatives from President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in November’s midterm elections.
The justices declined to halt a ruling by Virginia’s top court that blocked a voter-approved pro-Democratic map for the midterms, denying a request by Democrats in the state. The court’s action came in a brief and unsigned order that provided no rationale. No justice publicly dissented.
Democrats pursued the revised electoral map – crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. House of Representatives seats to Democrats – as part of a nationwide political battle initiated last year by Trump to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit.
The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court acted in the Virginia case after clearing the way on Monday for Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of the midterms.
Control of Congress is at stake in the midterms, with Republicans holding slim majorities in the House and Senate. Virginia has 11 seats in the 435-member House.
The Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision on May 8 threw out the state’s voter-approved map, ruling in favor of Republicans who challenged it. The court found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedures last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in the state legislature in time to put the ballot initiative before voters ahead of the midterms.
Don Scott, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and other Democratic legislators asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to halt the ruling by the state’s top court, saying it had “deprived voters, candidates and the Commonwealth (Virginia) of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”
They cited a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stated that state courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”
The Virginia referendum was the final step in a complicated legislative maneuver to sidestep a state constitutional amendment that was passed by voters in 2020 to put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.
Virginia Senate Republican Leader Ryan McDougle, one of the plaintiffs in the case, welcomed the court’s ruling on Friday.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed what we always knew: you cannot violate the Constitution to change the Constitution,” McDougle said.
Virginia voters approved the Democratic-backed electoral map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% to 48.3% margin, with about 3.1 million votes cast.
In a process called redistricting, the boundaries of legislative districts across the United States are reconfigured to reflect population changes as measured by the national U.S. census every 10 years. Redistricting traditionally has been carried out by state legislatures at the start of each new decade.
In the unusual mid-decade redistricting fight now unfolding, Republicans hold a clear advantage.
At Trump’s urging, Republican-governed Texas redrew its electoral map last year in a bid to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats, prompting Democratic-led California to reconfigure its congressional map to target five Republican-held seats. Multiple other states have joined the fray.
Democrats suffered a blow when the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts ahead of the November elections. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
Underscoring the stakes of the Virginia redistricting effort, Democratic- and Republican-affiliated groups spent close to $100 million on the referendum campaign.
The referendum has faced multiple legal challenges. In addition to the dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court, a judge in a separate case on April 22 also blocked the pro-Democratic map, acting in a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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