The Republican National Committee (RNC) has asked a Virginia court to stop voters from deciding whether Democrats can redraw the state’s congressional map, the latest salvo in the high-stakes battle over how the commonwealth responds to GOP gerrymanders pushed by President Donald Trump.
The RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee and several GOP members of Congress filed an emergency lawsuit Wednesday in the circuit court of Tazewell County, a jurisdiction favored by the GOP. They asked the judge to halt a planned March vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow Virginia’s Democratic-controlled legislature to redraw congressional districts mid-decade in response to Republican-led states doing the same.
The amendment would allow the General Assembly to redraw congressional districts if other states engage in mid-decade redistricting, temporarily overriding the current bipartisan commission process that voters approved in 2020.
The filing seeks an immediate court order pausing the election before early voting begins in early March. Ballots are scheduled to be finalized and transmitted within days, raising the stakes for a swift ruling.
Previously, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state’s redistricting referendum could go forward while it considered a case alleging that the state legislature violated procedural rules in passing the redistricting initiative. Effectively, that meant that voters would likely have the final say.
In the latest case, Republicans are challenging the ballot language, not the legality of the referendum itself.
Rather than directly challenging Democrats’ authority to redraw maps, the plaintiffs are attempting to stop the vote from happening at all by arguing the language voters would see on the ballot is misleading.
At the center of the fight is HB 1384, an amendment advanced by Virginia Democrats after Trump urged GOP-controlled states to redraw their maps outside the normal census cycle.
Pro-democracy advocates say the measure is a defensive move against Republicans reshaping maps nationwide to protect their slim majority in the U.S. House.
But Republicans argue the language voters must approve before any new map can go into effect is deceptive.
“The ballot language proposed in HB 1384 violates Article XII because it submits a question that is ‘misleading’ to the voters,” the filing reads. “This ballot language asks a completely different question than the one proposed by the General Assembly in the redistricting amendment. The proposed amendment authorizes the modification of Virginia districts in response to actions by other states.”
The lawsuit also raises broader procedural objections. Republicans argue the amendment was not properly adopted by two separate sessions of the General Assembly, as required under Virginia’s constitution, that the vote is being scheduled less than 90 days after final passage and that the measure improperly combines multiple subjects into a single amendment.
Democrats see the lawsuit as an attempt to take the decision out of voters’ hands.
Virginia voters approved a bipartisan redistricting commission in 2020, but Democratic lawmakers argue that process was designed for a world in which states redraw maps once a decade — not one in which Republican-led states are called by the president to revisit districts mid-cycle to gain seats.
Without the amendment, Democrats say Virginia would effectively be stuck playing by different rules while GOP legislatures elsewhere rig the political landscape.
Republicans are asking the court to move quickly. In their filing, they request a hearing and ruling on their motion before March 2 and seek a temporary restraining order to freeze the process in the meantime.
An injunction hearing in the case is scheduled for Thursday, meaning a judge could decide within days whether to pause the vote before early voting begins.
This story has been updated.
