Court Rules Just-Passed Virginia Gerrymandering Unconstitutional
by Catherine Salgado
A circuit court in Virginia just ruled that the newly passed but incredibly biased gerrymandered congressional map is unconstitutional.
Former Virginia attorney general and Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli II posted on X Wednesday about the gerrymandered map, “UPDATE on referendum lawsuits: The Tazewell Circuit Court just ruled the referendum unconstitutional. The Judge entered an injunction blocking certification of the election & denied a motion to stay pending appeal. A final order will be entered once drafted, & it will be immediately appealed.”
The new map would almost certainly hand ten out of eleven congressional districts to Democrat control. This would impact not only Virginia, therefore, but the Republican-Democrat balance of power in the U.S. Congress.
Cuccinelli had already predicted that the election results last night were not the final say on Virginia Democrats’ gerrymandering. He noted that the “[f]irst passage was invalid,” as the “amendment was taken up during a special session convened in 2024 for budget purposes. The General Assembly’s own call to the Governor (under Art. IV, §6 and Art. V, §5) and its governing resolution (HJR 6001) limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred.” In light of this, a Tazewell County judge ruled that this action was “void, ab initio.”
Cuccinelli continued with other strikes against the gerrymandering:
Art. XII, §1 requires that after first passage, a proposed amendment be “referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.” An election must intervene between first and second passage. Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.
Art. XII, §1 requires the amendment be submitted to voters “not sooner than ninety days after final passage by the General Assembly.” The timeline from second passage to the April 21 vote did not satisfy this requirement.