Victory: Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Unconstitutional Partisan Power Grab

The Constitution won. The people won. And today, we're celebrating.

We've been sounding the alarm on Virginia's brazen redistricting scheme since the moment it began. We warned that the legal battle was headed straight for the Virginia Supreme Court. And now, in a landmark ruling handed down today – May 8 – the Supreme Court of Virginia has affirmed: What Virginia Leftist politicians attempted was unconstitutional, and it will not stand.

Here's the scheme in plain terms. Left-leaning Virginia representatives, using a disputed Special Session, pushed through a proposed constitutional amendment that would have suspended Virginia's nonpartisan redistricting process and allowed the General Assembly to redraw congressional maps mid-decade. The result? A new map that would have handed the Left 10 of Virginia's 11 congressional seats – even though roughly half of Virginians lean conservative. The current delegation is split – six seats lean Left and five lean conservative. This was a takeover.

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To sell it to voters, Left-leaning state representatives put a ballot question before the public asking whether they wanted to "restore fairness" in elections. Fairness. That's what they called a map designed to give one party 91% of the representation with 51% of the vote.

The Virginia Supreme Court's majority opinion, authored by Justice Kelsey, didn't mince words. The Court found, as we wrote, that the General Assembly violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution – the provision that governs how the Constitution itself can be amended. That provision requires an "intervening general election" between the first and second legislative votes on any proposed constitutional amendment. The purpose is deliberate: It gives voters time to weigh in, to unseat legislators they disagree with, and to make their voices heard before the process is locked in.

What did the legislature do instead? They held their first vote to propose the amendment on October 31, 2025 – after over 1.3 million Virginians had already cast ballots in the ongoing general election. By Election Day, November 4, the damage was done. More than 40% of Virginia's voters had already voted without ever knowing a constitutional amendment was on the legislative table.

When the General Assembly voted on October 31 after weeks of early voting had already taken place, it disenfranchised over a million Virginians of their constitutional right to weigh in. As the Court put it, those voters were denied "their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the Constitution."

The Court's remedy is decisive: The unconstitutional vote is null and void, and Virginia's existing nonpartisan congressional maps – the ones this Court itself drew in 2021 and that earned national praise for their fairness – remain the law for the 2026 elections.

The Court emphasized:

While the Commonwealth is free by its lights to do the right thing for the right reason, the Rule of Law requires that it be done the right way.  Under the Constitution of Virginia, the right way “necessitate[s] compliance with the requirements of a deliberately lengthy, precise, and balanced procedure,” Coleman, 219 Va. at 153, governing the lawful adoption of constitutional amendments.  “[S]trict compliance with these mandatory provisions is required in order that all proposed constitutional amendments shall receive the deliberate consideration and careful scrutiny that they deserve.”

The majority opinion invoked a tradition that goes back to Virginia's own George Wythe, who declared in 1782 that if the legislature attempts to overleap the bounds set by the people, the courts must meet them:

[I]f the whole legislature, an event to be deprecated, should attempt to overleap the bounds, prescribed to them by the people, I, in administering the public justice of the country, will meet the united powers, at my seat in this tribunal; and, pointing to the constitution, will say, to them, here is the limit of your authority; and, hither, shall you go, but no further.

That is exactly what the Virginia Supreme Court did today. This is a victory – but the battle for fair elections and constitutional integrity is never truly over. Stand with the ACLJ. Defend the Constitution. Protect every voter's voice. Sign the petition: Defend Election Integrity and Constitution.