Well, well, well:

Democrats in Virginia looked to pick up four congressional seats by a partisan gerrymandered map that passed the legislature and went to a referendum where it passed by a couple of points. Now the Virginia Supreme Court has stricken the referendum as not having followed Virginia constitutional requirements.

From the Opinion:

On March 6, 2026, the General Assembly of Virginia submitted to Virginia voters a proposed constitutional amendment that authorizes partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts in the Commonwealth. We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.

Gerrymandering for political reasons is legal, but violating the procedural requirements in the state constitution is not. The Virginia Court did not base the ruling on the deficiencies in the wording of the referendum, which had been another possibility.

The upshot of the entire redistricting effort in Virginia is that the Democrats spent oodles of money – reported as eighty million dollars – on this, all to no avail. Between this and the recent SCOTUS decision on racial gerrymandering, the Democrats are not happy campers.

Although it seems to me that the procedural violations were egregious and obvious, the ruling was only 4-3. But we’ll take it.

This result could have been handed down prior to the election, but the Virginia Supreme Court decided to let the referendum proceed and rule on it after that. I had thought this meant there was a good chance that they wouldn’t have the courage to overrule it after it passed, but I’m happy to report that was not the case. The GOP was ready post-referendum to fight it, and they prevailed.