Virginia Democrats want to redistrict and presented a plan that would likely help them add four additional U.S. House seats in November's midterm elections.
Voters approved the plan in April.
However, state courts have since ruled against the plan. That includes the Virginia Supreme Court which struck the plan last week as unconstitutional.
There's talk of Democrats appealing but Hans von Spakovsky of Advancing American Freedom does not think it will end up the way liberals hope.
"I don't think the Virginia State Supreme Court is going to stay or suspend their judgment," Spakovsky told American Family Radio (AFR). "While I don't usually predict what the Supreme Court will do, I can pretty much guarantee it's a 100 percent certainty the U.S. Supreme Court won't take this case, because the U.S. Supreme Court defers to state supreme courts when those state supreme courts are interpreting their own state constitutions."
The Virginia Supreme Court struck down Virginia Democrats' redistricting plan because the state legislature violated procedural requirements when placing the constitutional amendment for mid-decade redistricting on the ballot.
The court ruled 4-3 that the Democratic-led legislature began the amendment process too late —after early voting had already started for the 2025 statewide elections — breaking the constitutional mandate that such amendments must be approved in two separate legislative sessions with a full election in between.
According to Spakovsky, the only way the U.S. Supreme Court would ever override something like this would be if the state constitutional provision blatantly violates the U.S. Constitution.
"That's not the case here," said Spakovsky, who worked at the DOJ in the George W. Bush administration. "I mean, all they did was uphold the procedural rules that are set out in the Virginia Constitution that say, ‘if you want to amend the Constitution, here's how you have to do it.’"
