If the ballot initiative passes and the court rules in their favor, Democrats will benefit from a new map that gives them a ten-to-one advantage.
The Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, and two Republican congressmen jointly filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in the Circuit Court of Tazewell County challenging Virginia Democrats’ 2026 redistricting ballot initiative law as deceptively worded, unconstitutional, and in violation of state code.
The RNC filed an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order pending a hearing, which the party requested to take place before March 2, 2026. GOP Representatives Morgan Griffith and Ben Cline of Virginia also joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs.
“With voting set to begin across the Commonwealth in less than a month on a defective proposal for constitutional amendment, emergency relief is necessary,” the plaintiffs wrote in a memo for emergency relief filed on Wednesday and first shared with National Review.
The GOP’s lawsuit against Virginia Department of Elections officials marks a new setback for Old Dominion Democrats, who spent the weekend celebrating the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision on Friday to allow the constitutional amendment to go before voters in an April 21 statewide referendum as the party’s appeal is underway.
Virginia Republican state legislators first challenged the validity of the special session that allowed Democrats to move forward with their redistricting referendum. A circuit court judge in conservative-leaning Tazewell County — the same court where the RNC and NRCC filed their new lawsuit on Wednesday — ruled in Republicans’ favor in late January and blocked the ballot initiative from moving forward on process grounds. But Democrats accused Republicans of “court-shopping” and appealed Tazewell Circuit Court Judge Jack S. Hurley Jr.’s decision, moving forward with their redistricting gambit in defiance of Hurley’s order. The Supreme Court of Virginia is expected to review Democrats’ appeal sometime after the ballot initiative vote takes place this spring.
If the ballot initiative passes and Virginia’s highest court rules in Democrats’ favor, voters will allow state legislators to toss out the current congressional map’s six-to-five Democratic advantage in favor of a new, ultra-partisan congressional map that favors Democrats by a ten-to-one margin. The new map favored by General Assembly leaders slices Northern Virginia’s highly populated and heavily Democratic suburbs into five congressional districts that fan into rural parts of the commonwealth and would give Republican voters just 9 percent congressional representation in a state that gave 46 percent of the vote to Donald Trump in 2024.
The GOP’s new complaint challenges Democrats’ recently-passed redistricting ballot initiative law on several counts, some of which pertain to the process Democrats have pursued. For example, the lawsuit argues that Democrats’ mid-decade redistricting gambit is illegal because it violates multiple facets of the commonwealth’s complicated two-step constitutional amendment process. According to state law, the General Assembly can only pass a constitutional amendment if both chambers clear the same language twice—with an intervening House of Delegates election in between.
The GOP’s complaint also argues that the referendum violates a provision of the Virginia constitution which requires that no election be held sooner than 90 days following final passage in the General Assembly. Since final passage occurred on January 16, the GOP’s complaint argues, early voting cannot legally take place until April 16, not March 6, as Democrats have scheduled.
“Even if the special election were beginning at the appropriate time, these actions by the General Assembly are unconstitutional and contravene an order of this Court,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit also argues that the ballot question is misleading. This spring, voters will be asked to vote on the following referendum: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”
The GOP contends that the phrase “restoring fairness” asserts “an obvious falsehood” because “if anything,” the initiative “destroys fairness, is the product of unfairness and is intended to increase unfairness.” The ultra-blue map would strip power from the state’s independent redistricting commission — which Virginia voters approved by a 66 percent ballot initiative margin in 2020 — and grants Democratic members an extremely unfair representational advantage.
“Virginia Democrats are trying to ram through an illegal redistricting scheme that a court has already called a blatant abuse of power,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement to National Review. “Despite nearly half of Virginians supporting President Trump, Abigail Spanberger and Democrats are working to silence voters and lock in permanent political control. They’re ignoring the state Constitution, misleading voters, and rushing a sham election. The RNC is stepping in to stop this power grab and defend Virginia voters who would be effectively disenfranchised by Democrats.”
The complaint also alleges that the redistricting constitutional amendment law illegally combines unrelated legislative provisions into one massive bill, and argues that “the use of the phrase ‘upcoming elections’ misleads voters about the scope and duration of the amendment’s impact” by implying that the new map will only be used for the 2026 elections, when the new map would govern the 2028 and 2030 elections, too. And it argues that the proposed constitutional amendment violates the commonwealth’s constitution by declining to tell Virginia voters “that the proposed amendment that they are considering strips them of their constitutional right to a nonpartisan redistricting process.”
“Virginia Democrats are ignoring their own Constitution and trying to rig the system in their favor,” NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson said in a statement to NR. “This is a reckless power grab designed to rush a sham process, mislead voters with deceptive ballot language, and lock in one-party control before Virginians have a fair say. The NRCC is proud to fund this legal fight and file alongside the RNC to stop the scheme and defend honest representation for every Virginian.”
The national GOP’s legal challenge is the latest chapter in a tense, drawn-out saga over Virginia Democrats’ redistricting gambit. As General Assembly leaders spent early 2026 fiercely debating behind closed doors which of three proposed congressional maps to put before voters in the spring, Spanberger officials spent early February privately warning Democratic lawmakers about the operational nightmare that might ensue for the Virginia Department of Elections if state legislators settled on one of the proposed ten-to-one maps over the proposed nine-to-two map, National Review reported earlier this month.
This post has been edited to include a statement from the NRCC.