What the Virginia Gerrymander Ruling is Really About, and Why Everyone Should Care

It qualifies as national news, given the mid-census gerrymanders we’re seeing across the country this week - Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and God knows where else.

For the record, let me restate this with apologies to any long-time readers (both of you): I hate partisan gerrymandering, especially between our decennial censuses (that’s every 10 years, for you Pittsburgh Penguins fans). I don’t care who does it or why, whether in Texas, Illinois, California, or Virginia. But this latest spat of extreme gerrymandering is being erroneously spun and badly misreported.

I won’t go there since I’ve already written about it. My reader is welcome to revisit it.

But the news on Friday was that the Commonwealth’s Supreme Court voted 4-3 to reject an April 21 referendum for an extreme gerrymander of US House seats in Virginia. Democrats in Richmond demonstrably failed to follow the state’s Constitution and the law. Partisan hack lawyer and Russia collusion hoax perpetrator Marc Elias claimed the referendum was tossed on a “technicality.” Justice Arthur Kelsey and his very slim majority agreed with the appellants on almost every point. His 46-page opinion carefully walks through how Democrats rammed their partisan agenda in so many illegal ways. I won’t bore you with it here, since I covered it along with Justice Kelsey’s well-written opinion.

Virginia’s best media outlet, Cardinal News, has the best reporting. Virginia’s imbecilic Attorney General, “two bullets to the head” Jay Jones, has filed an appeal with the US Supreme Court, but I promise you, even as a non-lawyer, that they will not take it up. Jones’s action is purely political theater, devoid of legal justification, and completely ignores Supreme Court precedents. He may qualify as America’s most incompetent and partisan state Attorney General. He embarrasses.

We’re now back to the 2026 election for the US House based on districts designed by “special masters” appointed by the Supreme Court after an independent commission failed to produce maps. That Independent Commission was created by a 2020 Constitutional amendment overwhelmingly supported by Republicans (less so by Democrats) and approved by voters by a 2:1 margin. Virginia has among the fairest maps in the nation, resulting in a 6-5 D-to-R delegation, reflecting that 51.4% of the vote for Congress went to Democrats in 2024.

That’s the very definition of fairness. But don’t tell Democrats.

The reactions to the Court’s ruling today are telling. And they should frighten you, because Democrats clearly believe that because 51.7% of Virginia voters supported the extreme gerrymander, that should trump (no pun intended) the rule of law.

Let’s look at the reactions of Virginia Democrats to the decision. They are as predictable as the sun rising in the east. Emphasis added to make a point.

US Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), 2016 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee
"Unlike Republican-led states that have redrawn their maps through backroom deals. If the Virginia Supreme Court had legitimate concerns about this referendum, the time to stop it would have been before three million Virginians cast their ballots. But the Court let the process move forward, and Virginians sent a message loud and clear: we see President Trump’s brazen power grab in states across the country, and we won’t stand for it.”

US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee
“While I respect the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision, it’s impossible to ignore that more than three million Virginians already cast their ballots on the amendment and deserved to have their voices heard.”

John Bisognano, president, National Democratic Redistricting Committee
“The people of Virginia—more than 3.1 million of them—voted to adopt a new Congressional map to thwart Donald Trump’s ongoing attempt to unfairly rig the 2026 midterm elections. The Virginia Supreme Court is wrong to take it upon itself to overrule the citizens of Virginia after they already voted.”

US Rep. Suzan DelBene, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair
“Last month, millions of Virginians cast their ballots and stood up against the Republican power grab. Today, four unelected judges decided to cast aside the will of the voters.”

I could go on, but do you see a trend? The people (a slim majority) have spoken, and that’s more important than the Constitution and the rule of law. Three justices appear to have agreed.

Justice Kelsey, in an opinion supported by a majority of colleagues, went into great detail on why precedent required the Supreme Court to allow the referendum to proceed. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled against opponents of the referendum when asked to stop the election and save voters $5 million and lots of time (not to mention over $100 million in campaign contributions). From page 7 of Justice Kelsey’s opinion:

It is fair to ask whether we could have or should have reviewed the constitutionality of the proposed amendment prior to it being presented to the voters. But it is not a question the Commonwealth should ask. Throughout this litigation, the Commonwealth has insisted that we cannot lawfully decide this case prior to the referendum. In its motion for a stay in this case, the Commonwealth argued that longstanding Virginia precedent, Scott v. James, was “virtually indistinguishable” from this case and that it clearly held that “courts cannot interfere to stop any of the proceedings while this permanent law is in the process of being made,” and “[o]nly ‘upon the completion of the proceedings, [if] the validity of the amendment is assailed[] on the ground that the several provisions of the Constitution have not been complied with, then the courts can pass upon the validity of the amendment.’”

I’m puzzled why the State Supreme Court didn’t “overturn” precedent. Our founders and framers specifically rejected rule by majority, or a “mobocracy.”

America's founders generally feared that unrestricted rule by a majority would lead to instability, injustice, and the "tyranny of the majority," wherein the rights of the minority are ignored. While believing in popular sovereignty, they designed a republic with checks and balances—such as the Senate, Electoral College, and separation of powers—to slow down the democratic process and prevent "mob rule.”

James Madison, our third President, addressed it in Federalist Number 10, but Alex DeToqueville, in his great book, Democracy in America, said it best:

“When a man or a party suffers from an injustice in the United States, to whom do you want them to appeal? To public opinion? That is what forms the majority. To the legislative body? It represents the majority and blindly obeys it. To the executive power? It is named by the majority and serves it as a passive instrument. To the police? The police are nothing other than the majority under arms. To the jury? The jury is the majority vested with the right to deliver judgments. The judges themselves, in certain states, are elected by the majority. However iniquitous or unreasonable the measure that strikes you may be, you must therefore submit to it or flee. What is that if not the very soul of tyranny under the forms of liberty?”

Having worked to rig our elections with dubious and unsafe vote-by-mail schemes and worse, Democrats have perfected “ballot harvesting.” It’s how they won, albeit narrowly, the referendum in Virginia on April 21, providing the margin of victory. This, despite the 2005 Carter-Baker Commission clearly stating that voting by mail was the least secure method of voting. Thanks to the pandemic, Democrats persuaded more than enough partisan judges and even a few stupid Republicans (looking at you, Pennsylvania, thanks to your Act 77) to allow this form of voting to proliferate. This results in “victorious” politicians now demanding that, since “the people” have voted, that must supersede law and justice. That’s what our Founders warned us against, and they built our system of checks and balances to protect against it.

It is now under attack.

Virginia Democrats believe that we’re now supposed to bend the knee to the tyranny of the mob. The Virginia Supreme Court’s decision and reaction to it is but the latest evidence. Mob rule or else. It’s why so many Democrats want to pack the court, expanding it from 9 to as many as 15, by adding compliant left-wing justices to get their way. If Democrats in our nation’s capital get trifecta control of Congress and the White House, you can almost count on it.

One more point: Justice Kelsey demonstrated more courage than you may realize with his opinion. In Virginia, justices of the Supreme Court are chosen not by the governor, but by the General Assembly for 12-year terms. Kelsey’s is up for reappointment in 2027, by the same crowd that illegally jammed the extreme gerrymander in 2025 and earlier this year. Customarily, justices are reappointed; rarely are they rejected or replaced.

What do you think the Democrats in Richmond will do when his term expires next year?

That is the biggest threat to our democracy, and this Supreme Court decision should be a big wake-up call. For all of us.