Virginia Democrats share proposed US House map despite court ruling against redistricting push

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia Democrats unveiled a proposed U.S. House map Thursday that aims to give their party four more seats in the latest effort to fight President Donald Trump’s redistricting push, even as an ongoing legal challenge makes use of that map for the midterm elections far from certain.

The map would dilute Republicans’ hold in Virginia’s conservative areas while giving Democrats a better footing in the districts they would like to flip. And it would give Democrats nationwide a boost in the redistricting battle for the House ahead of the November elections.

But in January, a Virginia judge ruled that Democrats’ proposed constitutional amendment for redrawing the state’s U.S. House lines was illegal. It was a blow to Democrats’ plan to let voters decide on the amendment in a referendum in April. Democrats are appealing in the case, which appears headed directly to the state Supreme Court.

The state is imposed by a court after a bipartisan legislative commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census.

Earlier Thursday, the state’s top Democratic legislators said they would unveil a map drawn to help Democrats win 10 of the 11 seats. Data from recent past elections attached to the proposal posted online Thursday support that possibility. A congressional primary is currently set for June.

Virginia Republicans have rebuffed Democrats’ efforts to redraw the House map, pointing to a recent yearslong push for fair maps in the state. In 2020, voters supported a change to the state’s constitution aimed at ending legislative gerrymandering by creating the redistricting commission.

Virginia Democrats, who decisively flipped 13 seats in the state House and the governor’s office last November, have long said that efforts to redistrict the state would level the playing field after Trump pushed to redraw House districts in Republican-controlled states such as Texas.

“These are not ordinary times and Virginia will not sit on the sidelines while it happens,” state Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas told reporters earlier Thursday alongside House Speaker Don Scott. “We made a promise to level the playing field, and today we’re keeping our promise.”

In other states, the redistricting battle has resulted so far in nine more seats that Republicans believe they can win in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and six that Democrats think they can win in California and Utah. Democrats have hoped to make up that three-seat margin in Virginia.

Mike Young with Virginians for Fair Maps, a Republican-backed group opposed to the redrawing, called Thursday’s proposal “an illegal, hyper-partisan gerrymander drawn in backrooms hidden from the public” and one “that completely disregards common sense.”

Redistricting initiatives are still being litigated in several states, and there is no guarantee that the parties will win the seats they have redrawn.

While Virginia’s redistricting push hits hurdles, Maryland lawmakers have advanced a new map that could enable Democrats to defeat the state’s only House Republican, after Democratic Gov. Wes Moore urged them in person to do so, though obstacles remain for enacting such a map there.

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Robertson reported from Raleigh, North Carolina. Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.