The folks who brought you the inadvertent hilarity of “Virgnia” and “sentator” would like to make amends by letting you know they can make mistakes in important legal filings that don’t involve misspellings.
In an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States seeking to overturn his state’s Supreme Court ruling a new voter map unconstitutional, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones’ office — which was much criticized for several key misspellings in a similar document last week — ran this one through spell check, but forgot to change the template.
Thus, it still reads that it is an “emergency application to the Supreme Court of Virginia.” Geniuses, ladies and gentlemen! Geniuses!
So, catching you up with this story: Last week, Virginia’s state Supreme Court ruled that Democrats effectively violated the state constitution by ramming through a law at the last minute to gerrymander the commonwealth’s U.S. House seats from a 6-5 Democrat advantage to a 10-1 Democrat advantage.
The independent redistricting commission that drew up the state’s map is constitutionally mandated in Virginia — and, like all amendments to the constitution there, the General Assembly must first approve it before a general election for the state legislature; then it must undergo a referendum, and then the General Assembly must approve it again.
The problem is that, as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board pointed out, the Democrats didn’t want the court to rule on it until after the referendum in April, which passed barely after a not-inconsiderable amount of resources were poured into it, and seemed to be “betting that if the amendment won at the ballot box, the court would flinch at countermanding the will of the people.”
They did not flinch, noting that the late first passage of the proposed amendment by the General Assembly on Oct. 31, 2025, meant that roughly 40 percent of the ballots for the “intervening election” that’s supposed to occur between the passage of the bill and the referendum being held had already been cast. Judge D. Arthur Kelsey wrote for the majority that this last-minute amendment “appears to be wholly unprecedented,” and it was struck down by a 4-3 margin.
The offices of Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones — formerly best known as the child-murder fantasist that Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger managed to drag over the line last year, despite his clear issues — and House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, both Democrats, immediately filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court to delay issuing the mandate, saying that they would be appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
🚨 Virginia Democrats indicate that they will appeal today’s ruling invalidating the redistricting referendum to the United States Supreme Court.
They ask the Virginia Supreme Court to withhold its mandate. pic.twitter.com/RUHVSSUT4u
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) May 8, 2026
There were several issues with this, first and most substantively, that this is very clearly a state matter and not a federal one. Aside from that, despite the fact that this could be seen coming down the pike from a mile away, there were also signs that this document was a bit, uh, rushed.
— Rock or Something (@centraliavet) May 8, 2026
You don’t see the name of the Commonwealth of Virginia misspelled too often by official officeholders in said commonwealth, but there you have it. And while one understands Speaker Scott is not a “sentator,” that’s a word I hope most of us could spell.
Well, OK, given a second shot, they got it right, correct? Sort of. Spelling: yes. Court name: no.
Ok, so the AG of Virginia, Jay Jones, has filed an emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court asking them to overrule the Virginia State Supreme Courts ruling, and while he may have sent it through spellcheck this time, he failed to change templates..because this one is… pic.twitter.com/VnaSPydgAQ
— Michelle Maxwell ™ (@MichelleMaxwell) May 11, 2026
Very weird that cover page states “On Emergency Application to the Supreme Court of Virginia.” That’s the styling for a petition for a writ of certiorari, but it makes no sense to say that the emergency application is “to” the Supreme Court of Virginia. pic.twitter.com/DPcVFTQwjZ
— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) May 11, 2026
Might as well have misspelled “SCOTUS.” Great job, 11/10.
This is what happens when you get a DEI hire who dreams about killing his enemies as your attorney general. And if you think it can’t get any worse, just consider this: Ketanji Brown Jackson will be voting (quite predictably, at that) on this case they sent as an “emergency application to the Supreme Court of Virginia.”
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