May 8 (Reuters) – Virginia’s top court on Friday threw out a new electoral map that was crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. congressional seats to Democrats, in a setback to Democratic hopes of retaking the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.
In a 4-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court rejected a Democratic-backed ballot measure approved by voters in April that reconfigured the state’s U.S. House of Representatives districts for partisan advantage.
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Ruling in favor of a Republican challenge, the court’s majority found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedure last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in time to reach the ballot ahead of the November election.
The ruling boosts Republican hopes of keeping control of the U.S. House, despite a razor-thin majority and deep voter unhappiness with President Donald Trump.
On his Truth Social account, Trump called the ruling a “huge win for the Republican Party.”
Democrats cried foul, with Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, calling the court’s decision undemocratic and ignoring the will of millions of voters who had voted in favor of changing the electoral map.
Kyle Kondik, a nonpartisan elections analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said while it was still too early to predict the impact of the ruling, it had undoubtedly improved the electoral chances for Republicans.
“Whatever odds you would have given to Republicans winning the House yesterday, I think you would raise them today,” he said.
Still, Republicans face significant political headwinds ahead of November’s elections, with many voters unhappy with Trump’s handling of the economy and the Iran war which has increased gas prices.
Marcia S. Price, a Democratic state delegate who played a central role in getting the new electoral map passed by voters, said the main job now was to work even harder to turn out voters to flip Republican-held seats from the old map.
“You lick your wounds, get back up and keep fighting,” she said in an interview.
Democrats pursued the Virginia measure as part of a nationwide battle by both parties to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit. The mid-cycle process of redrawing maps is unusual. Maps are typically redrawn once a decade after the national census.
Republicans now hold a clear advantage in the fight, which began last year when Trump pushed Texas Republicans to rip up their electoral map and draw new district lines, targeting five Democratic U.S. House incumbents.
Democrats suffered a major blow last week when the U.S. Supreme Court‘s conservative majority eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
