U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks with reporters as he walks to his office following a press conference at the U.S. Capitol building on March 27, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Samuel Corum | Getty Images
A Virginia circuit court judge on Wednesday issued an order blocking the results of a congressional redistricting referendum that could net Democrats four extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026.
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, in a statement, vowed to fight the order issued by Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley, a Republican appointee, a day after Tuesday’s referendum approved the newly drawn districts.
“My office will immediately file an appeal in the Court of Appeals,” Jones said.
“As I said last night, Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the People’s vote,” the attorney general said. “We look forward to defending the outcome of last night’s election in court.”
The Virginia redistricting referendum – which is the latest battleground in the partisan gerrymandering war leading up to November’s midterm elections — passed by three percentage points.
The measure allows for a temporary adoption of new district lines but would return control of redistricting to an independent commission in 2031.
Hurley, in the final judgment issued Wednesday, ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee challenging the legality of the referendum.
The judge said the referendum question was void “ab initio” — Latin for “from the beginning.”
“Any and all votes for or against the proposed constitutional amendment in the April 21, 2026 special election are ineffective,” Hurley wrote.
He enjoined the state from taking any actions to update or alter election districts, or voter registration records as a result of the referendum.
Earlier Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries struck a defiant tone on the heels of Democrats’ win in Virginia.
“House Democrats will continue to fight one battle after another on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries, D-N.Y., said at a press conference at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, in an apparent reference to the Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar’s Best Picture winner.
“Last night was a big victory for the people of Virginia. A big victory for America. And a big victory for democracy. [President] Donald Trump and Republicans launched this gerrymandering war, and we made clear as Democrats that we’re going to finish it,” Jeffries continued. “We will not let Donald Trump rig the midterm election.”
The Trump administration argued the ballot initiative was not a clear-cut win for Democrats.
“This is a state in November of 2025 that went by 15 points to the Democrat for governor and about eight points for attorney general,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Trump political advisor James Blair said on Wednesday during an appearance on CNN’s “Inside Politics with Dana Bash.”
“Last night this was a three-point race. That’s actually a three-point overperformance of the Trump 2024 historic performance in Virginia,” Blair said.
“So just as a baseline, for all the Democrats crowing this morning, if Republicans perform anywhere near on average the way they did in Virginia last night, we not only add seats to the Senate, but we add seats to the House and we have a historic midterm,” Blair said.
Win could help Democrats take U.S. House
But the Virginia results will likely be a boon to a Democratic Party that was already favored to win back the House majority this November. It also effectively negates the edge Republicans had earned as a result of their own redistricting efforts.
“Virginia voters have spoken, and tonight they approved a temporary measure to push back against a President who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who campaigned in support of the resolution, said in a statement after the results were announced late Tuesday.
“Virginians watched other states go along with those demands without voter input — and we refused to let that stand. We responded the right way: at the ballot box,” Spanberger said.
Democrats have historically opposed partisan gerrymandering but took an aggressive approach to the issue after Trump and Republicans, fearing a loss of control in the House in the next Congress, launched their own redistricting efforts.
Trump last summer began urging Texas Republicans to undertake a mid-decade redistricting. States typically redraw House district lines after the national census that takes place every 10 years.
Texas was first state to redistrict for 2026
The GOP-led Texas legislature heeded the president’s warning and adopted maps that could net Republicans as many as five seats. Republican legislatures in other states — including Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri — followed suit. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has called a special session of the GOP-led state legislature for later this month to re-draw its congressional districts.
In response, Democrats in some states turned to voters to change maps within their control. Californians in November voted in favor of a ballot initiative intended to give Democrats five additional House seats this fall.
Trump, in a Truth Social post on Wednesday, called the Virginia vote a “rigged election” and claimed the language on the referendum was confusingly worded. “As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the Referendum, and neither do they!” Trump posted.
Proponents of the Virginia effort framed it as a necessary evil to fight back against anti-democratic impulses of the Trump administration, but it places Democrats in an awkward position after taking a decidedly anti-partisan-gerrymandering tack in recent years.
Democrats had opposed gerrymandering
Democrats have on multiple occasions introduced legislation that would seek to curb partisan gerrymandering by requiring independent commissions to re-draw congressional districts. In 2021, Democrats made the For the People Act, which included anti-gerrymandering provisions, their top legislative priority.
Jeffries on Wednesday, sought to draw distinctions between the way Democrats and Republicans have approached the redistricting issue.
The Democratic leader said the party made the decision to respond to Republican redistricting “in a manner consistent with our values.”
“Our response has been forceful, temporary, as a direct reaction to what MAGA extremists have done, and at all times approved by the voters,” Jeffries said. “That’s the big difference between how we’ve approached this effort and Republicans, who are going into state legislatures in the dead of night, passing maps and then being afraid to present those maps to the people in those states.”
