House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York declared himself stunned by a court decision that almost everyone else expected.
On Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state’s new gerrymandered congressional map, drawn by Democrats and narrowly approved by voters in a referendum last month, violated Virginia’s state constitution.
“We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision,” Jeffries said Friday in a statement posted to the social media platform X.
Moreover, the New York Democrat boldly declared that the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision “cannot stand.”
As House minority leader, Jeffries has no authority over the rulings of state courts.
“Over three million Virginia citizens cast their votes in a free and fair election,” Jeffries wrote, “yet the State Supreme Court has chosen to invalidate their voice, disenfranchise them and violate their due process rights. The decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.”
On April 21, Virginia voters approved the Democrats’ gerrymandered map by approximately 51.7 percent to 48.3 percent.
At the time, however, many observers recognized the vote as problematic. After all, earlier this year, a judge in the Old Dominion’s Tazewell County twice ruled against the new map. Virginia’s Supreme Court then allowed the referendum to proceed, albeit with a caveat that judicial review of the map would continue.
Afterward, both the Tazewell County judge and the Virginia Supreme Court refused to allow the election’s certification.
As of last week, leading Virginia Democrats reportedly expected the state’s highest court to rule against them.
Nonetheless, Jeffries professed surprise while implicitly blaming President Donald Trump and “MAGA” Republicans.
“MAGA Republicans have adopted voter suppression as a strategy,” Jeffries’ statement continued, “as also evidenced by far-right extremists on the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act to open the door to a Jim Crow-like attack on Black representation across the American South.”
In last week’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act neither requires nor permits states to draw congressional districts with race-based outcomes in mind.
That decision, of course, did not involve the questions at issue in Virginia. In the Callais case, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the practice of racial gerrymandering but not gerrymandering for partisan political advantage.
Still, Jeffries continued.
“We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision,” his statement added. “No matter what it takes, House Democrats will win in November so we can help rescue this nation from the extremism being unleashed by Donald Trump and Republicans. Our fight is not over. We are just getting started.”
The decision by the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn the will of more than three million voters will not stand. pic.twitter.com/ZtayVJRw4T
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) May 8, 2026
Jeffries did not say what tactics Democrats would employ to win in November “[n]o matter what it takes.”
Meanwhile, red-state Republicans have already begun redrawing their congressional maps for the post-Callais legal landscape.
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