Having apparently backed off their Bond-villain-plan to remove all of the Justices from the Virginia Supreme Court and replace them with new ones, it looks like Democrats have settled on a Hail Mary to the Supreme Court.
Virginia Democrats have filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court Monday in a last-ditch attempt to save redrawn congressional maps that could send four extra Democrats to the U.S. House, arguing that the state’s high court improperly overturned a redistricting referendum last week.
But some top Democrats express little hope that the appeal will affect this November’s congressional mid-terms and are pivoting to waging campaigns in the state’s existing districts.
In an interview, state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) said “the practical realities of our election calendar” will prevent candidates from running in new maps even if conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court were open to helping Virginia Democrats.
Tuesday is the deadline set by state elections officials for putting the ballot mechanisms in place. Surovell noted that Virginia’s elections software is antiquated and overdue for replacement.
So, if I'm reading this right, the deadline is either midnight tonight or maybe midnight tomorrow for setting up ballots. So, yeah, I'd say it's a bit too late to be hoping the Supreme Court changes the ballgame for you.
Also, what exactly is the appeal about here? The Virginia Supreme Court has the final word on state law unless it violates the U.S. Constitution in some way. But it sounds like the claim being made is that it's harmful the Democrats are being forced to abide by the law.
“The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate,” Democrats told the US Supreme Court on Monday. “By forcing the commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment the people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”
Again, because VA had a redistricting plan built into the state constitution, Democrats had to change the constitution in order to pass the new maps. But the process for doing that required two votes separated by an election. And the Supreme Court found that they didn't manage to do that. So the constitutional amendment mentioned in this appeal to the Supreme Court is invalid according to the state supreme court.
But the argument being made by AG Jay Jones seems designed to appeal to the originalists on the court. The appeal claims that the word "election" is defined as one day and therefore the claim that early voting constituted an ongoing election was an error by the VA Supreme Court:
The Court acknowledged that Article IV, Section 3 provides that members of the House of Delegates “shall be elected . . . on the Tuesday succeeding the first Monday in November.” Va. Const. art. IV, § 3. But, the Court reasoned, that provision “never uses the word ‘election’ and makes no attempt to define that unmentioned term.” App. 20a. In the Court’s view, “[t]he noun phrase ‘general election’ in Article XII, Section 1 is not the same as the verb phrase ‘shall be elected’ in Article IV, Section 3”and “[t]his material variation connotes a variation in meaning.” App. 22a (cleaned up). The Court did not acknowledge the other provisions of the Constitution defining the term “election.”
And the fact that the word "election" is also defined in federal law is how VA Dems are trying to rope the Supreme Court into overriding the decision of a state supreme court in the first place.
The decision below relied on its mistaken understanding of the meaning of the term “election” in federal law as a basis for its interpretation of that same term in the Virginia Constitution.
Will the Supreme Court buy into this and take up this case?
The US Supreme Court has long held that state Supreme Courts have the final word on the meaning of State Constitutions.
— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) May 8, 2026
VA Dems appeal is going nowhere.
Chief Justice Roberts area. Guaranteed, he WILL NOT take this up and issue the Injunction requested.
— Ladylawyer (@Ladylaw31256058) May 11, 2026
Played their own game against them, and demos cant handle the loss.
FAFO. https://t.co/71spFzJt4f
As expected, this is a crazy filing. Virginia makes two arguments in support of its request for an emergency stay.
— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) May 11, 2026
1. It contends that the state supreme court's interpretation of the Virginia constitution is "predicated ... on a grave misreading of federal law." But the court… https://t.co/5d2r8VLBLE
It's probably not going to happen, but Democrats may know that already. Even PBS News thinks this might be an attempt to make the Supreme Court part of this so Dems can keep demagoguing that Court.
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.
That may be what's happening here. They've realized they can't have their preferred maps but they can still chose their issues and while the VA Supreme Court is not a national issue, the Supreme Court is. Never let a crisis go to waste, as the saying goes.
If it were up to me, the Supreme Court would respond to this appeal with this 9-second video clip:
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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