Last week, a majority of Virginia\u2019s supreme court voted to overturn a statewide election approving new congressional maps. Technically, voters were asked to vote on a constitutional amendment allowing the state legislature to create new maps in response to Donald Trump asking Texas (and other Republican-controlled state governments) to redraw their maps to dilute Democratic constituencies. The Virginia constitution requires a proposed amendment to pass the state legislature twice \u2014 in two different sessions \u2014 before appearing on the ballot. At that point, the amendment still requires the support of a majority of voters in a statewide election. <\/p>\n
Virginia did each of those things. Virginia\u2019s supreme court spent 30 pages inventing an alternate reading of that process and tossed out the results of the election.<\/p>\n
And, like clockwork, Jonathan Turley went to the NY Post<\/a> to explain why the state court was right. Except\u2026 somehow over the course of almost 800 words, he doesn\u2019t ever explain the actual decision<\/em>. <\/p>\n The court found that effort was not only unconstitutional, but \u201cwholly unprecedented in Virginia\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n It characterized the state\u2019s position as \u201ca story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail.\u201d<\/p>\n While some of us had previously expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to circumvent the state constitution, the media almost exclusively relied on liberal experts who predicted the new districts would be upheld.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Beyond repeating these cutesy turns of phrase, Turley won\u2019t delve any deeper into explaining the opinion. Normally, the role of a legal analyst involves at least a nod to the law, but Turley adopts a post-modern view of legal analysis that skips over such a bummer. In all fairness, to Turley, the Virginia Supreme Court struggled to articulate a coherent theory itself<\/a>, and the professor may have decided it would be too embarrassing to include the majority\u2019s actual opinion.<\/p>\n The relevant language of Article XII, Section 1 requires amendments be \u201cagreed to by a majority of the members elected to each of the two houses\u201d and then \u201creferred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.\u201d The Virginia legislature did that. The 2025 session passed the proposal and the 2026 session, seated after a general election, passed it again. Then it went to the voters and the voters approved it.<\/p>\n While the state constitution\u2019s text just provides that amendments have to be popular enough to pass the legislature twice, the court bootstrapped on new reasoning that \u2014 because Virginia allows early voting, and because some ballots were cast before the first session formally passed the amendment \u2014 the entire next session somehow couldn\u2019t qualify as occurring \u201cafter the next general election.\u201d Citing cherry-picked dictionary definitions and tortured analogies about weddings, the majority redefined a straightforward sentence to fit its policy goal.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not how Virginia elections work<\/a>. Virginia\u2019s early voting laws are predicated on the idea that the election still takes place<\/em> on election day \u2014 voters are merely permitted to cast ballots in advance. This also makes sense in the historical context of the state constitution, as Virginia doesn\u2019t really do lame duck sessions, meaning the framers of the amendment language \u2014 who would\u2019ve had no conception of early voting \u2014 meant \u201cpass once in one session\u2026 then go to the next elected session.\u201d And that\u2019s before getting into the fact that the \u201cnext general election\u201d language, on its face, only mandates automatic referral, not place a limit on what makes for what qualifies as a legitimate legislature for putting an amendment on the ballot.<\/p>\n Turley probably didn\u2019t want to get into telling his MAGA audience \u2014 an audience that has spent the last decade railing against early voting and voting by mail \u2014 that they won this case because the Virginia supreme court ruled that elections don\u2019t happen on election day. Best to hide that ball and make insinuations about why the amendment was struck down.<\/p>\n Once Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican representation,\u00a0total war broke out<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and now\u00a0red states like Florida<\/a>\u00a0and Tennessee have moved forward with\u00a0their own redistricting<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Of note, Turley\u2019s account never once uses the word \u201cTexas,\u201d the state that started this \u201ctotal war,\u201d which is like skipping Pearl Harbor to rail against the Doolittle raid. Instead, he cites Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger\u2019s past opposition to gerrymandering as though she signed off on this effort out of nowhere. This frame also allows him to treat Florida and Tennessee as the innocent bystanders, simply left with no choice but to respond to the United States Supreme Court nuking the Voting Rights Act. Surely neither Confederate state would be redrawing maps now but for Virginia! <\/p>\n Put aside Texas\u2026 California<\/em> already became the first to respond to Texas by voting to redistrict without any mention from Turley. What about Virginia riles up Turley\u2019s audience so much more? Especially when Virginia \u2014 unlike Texas, Florida, or Tennessee \u2014 took the issue to the voters rather than disenfranchising voters in closed sessions. Hard not to think that the hangup flows from conservative rage at Virginia voters themselves. The decision may twist itself into knots attacking the state legislature, but for the NY Post audience, the anger comes from the idea that Virginia\u2019s voters have somehow betrayed its rebel roots. It\u2019s a \u201cgreat replacement theory\u201d in miniature \u2014 a visceral disdain for how those people<\/em>, however defined, have undermined a Virginia that used to exist.<\/p>\n Preaching to that audience, Turley doesn\u2019t need to get bogged down in goofy procedural minutiae about when an election is not really an election. The hero of his story is a supreme court willing to swoop in and overturn an election\u2026 all the audience needs to here about why is that it was \u201cwholly unprecedented.\u201d Bad dictionary definitions and armchair history provides the set dressing for the lawyers, but Turley\u2019s audience not only doesn\u2019t need to hear about all that. Honestly, trying to explain how conservative courts reverse engineer these decisions would risk giving the Post audience an \u201care we the baddies?<\/a>\u201d moment.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fitting that Turley pivots his piece toward pearl clutching over growing support for court expansion. Why bother explaining the reasoning of an opinion, when the purpose of the court is romantic countermajoritarianism? The audience doesn\u2019t want \u201clegal analysis\u201d to understand the opinion, they want a morality play confirming that there\u2019s an institution that can stand against the arc of the moral universe. <\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: Virginia Supreme Court Overturns Election Because Redistricting Isn\u2019t Legal Unless It Disenfranchises Black Voters<\/a> The post Jonathan Turley Defends Virginia Redistricting Opinion By Refusing To Explain It<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week, a majority of Virginia\u2019s supreme court voted to overturn a statewide election approving new congressional maps. Technically, voters were asked to vote on a constitutional amendment allowing the state legislature to create new maps in response to Donald Trump asking Texas (and other Republican-controlled state governments) to redraw their maps to dilute Democratic constituencies. The Virginia constitution requires a proposed amendment to pass the state legislature twice \u2014 in two different sessions \u2014 before appearing on the ballot. At that point, the amendment still requires the support of a majority of voters in a statewide election. <\/p>\n Virginia did each of those things. Virginia\u2019s supreme court spent 30 pages inventing an alternate reading of that process and tossed out the results of the election.<\/p>\n And, like clockwork, Jonathan Turley went to the NY Post<\/a> to explain why the state court was right. Except\u2026 somehow over the course of almost 800 words, he doesn\u2019t ever explain the actual decision<\/em>. <\/p>\n The court found that effort was not only unconstitutional, but \u201cwholly unprecedented in Virginia\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n It characterized the state\u2019s position as \u201ca story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail.\u201d<\/p>\n While some of us had previously expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to circumvent the state constitution, the media almost exclusively relied on liberal experts who predicted the new districts would be upheld.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Beyond repeating these cutesy turns of phrase, Turley won\u2019t delve any deeper into explaining the opinion. Normally, the role of a legal analyst involves at least a nod to the law, but Turley adopts a post-modern view of legal analysis that skips over such a bummer. In all fairness, to Turley, the Virginia Supreme Court struggled to articulate a coherent theory itself<\/a>, and the professor may have decided it would be too embarrassing to include the majority\u2019s actual opinion.<\/p>\n The relevant language of Article XII, Section 1 requires amendments be \u201cagreed to by a majority of the members elected to each of the two houses\u201d and then \u201creferred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates.\u201d The Virginia legislature did that. The 2025 session passed the proposal and the 2026 session, seated after a general election, passed it again. Then it went to the voters and the voters approved it.<\/p>\n While the state constitution\u2019s text just provides that amendments have to be popular enough to pass the legislature twice, the court bootstrapped on new reasoning that \u2014 because Virginia allows early voting, and because some ballots were cast before the first session formally passed the amendment \u2014 the entire next session somehow couldn\u2019t qualify as occurring \u201cafter the next general election.\u201d Citing cherry-picked dictionary definitions and tortured analogies about weddings, the majority redefined a straightforward sentence to fit its policy goal.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not how Virginia elections work<\/a>. Virginia\u2019s early voting laws are predicated on the idea that the election still takes place<\/em> on election day \u2014 voters are merely permitted to cast ballots in advance. This also makes sense in the historical context of the state constitution, as Virginia doesn\u2019t really do lame duck sessions, meaning the framers of the amendment language \u2014 who would\u2019ve had no conception of early voting \u2014 meant \u201cpass once in one session\u2026 then go to the next elected session.\u201d And that\u2019s before getting into the fact that the \u201cnext general election\u201d language, on its face, only mandates automatic referral, not place a limit on what makes for what qualifies as a legitimate legislature for putting an amendment on the ballot.<\/p>\n Turley probably didn\u2019t want to get into telling his MAGA audience \u2014 an audience that has spent the last decade railing against early voting and voting by mail \u2014 that they won this case because the Virginia supreme court ruled that elections don\u2019t happen on election day. Best to hide that ball and make insinuations about why the amendment was struck down.<\/p>\n Once Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican representation,\u00a0total war broke out<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and now\u00a0red states like Florida<\/a>\u00a0and Tennessee have moved forward with\u00a0their own redistricting<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Of note, Turley\u2019s account never once uses the word \u201cTexas,\u201d the state that started this \u201ctotal war,\u201d which is like skipping Pearl Harbor to rail against the Doolittle raid. Instead, he cites Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger\u2019s past opposition to gerrymandering as though she signed off on this effort out of nowhere. This frame also allows him to treat Florida and Tennessee as the innocent bystanders, simply left with no choice but to respond to the United States Supreme Court nuking the Voting Rights Act. Surely neither Confederate state would be redrawing maps now but for Virginia! <\/p>\n Put aside Texas\u2026 California<\/em> already became the first to respond to Texas by voting to redistrict without any mention from Turley. What about Virginia riles up Turley\u2019s audience so much more? Especially when Virginia \u2014 unlike Texas, Florida, or Tennessee \u2014 took the issue to the voters rather than disenfranchising voters in closed sessions. Hard not to think that the hangup flows from conservative rage at Virginia voters themselves. The decision may twist itself into knots attacking the state legislature, but for the NY Post audience, the anger comes from the idea that Virginia\u2019s voters have somehow betrayed its rebel roots. It\u2019s a \u201cgreat replacement theory\u201d in miniature \u2014 a visceral disdain for how those people<\/em>, however defined, have undermined a Virginia that used to exist.<\/p>\n Preaching to that audience, Turley doesn\u2019t need to get bogged down in goofy procedural minutiae about when an election is not really an election. The hero of his story is a supreme court willing to swoop in and overturn an election\u2026 all the audience needs to here about why is that it was \u201cwholly unprecedented.\u201d Bad dictionary definitions and armchair history provides the set dressing for the lawyers, but Turley\u2019s audience not only doesn\u2019t need to hear about all that. Honestly, trying to explain how conservative courts reverse engineer these decisions would risk giving the Post audience an \u201care we the baddies?<\/a>\u201d moment.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fitting that Turley pivots his piece toward pearl clutching over growing support for court expansion. Why bother explaining the reasoning of an opinion, when the purpose of the court is romantic countermajoritarianism? The audience doesn\u2019t want \u201clegal analysis\u201d to understand the opinion, they want a morality play confirming that there\u2019s an institution that can stand against the arc of the moral universe. <\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: Virginia Supreme Court Overturns Election Because Redistricting Isn\u2019t Legal Unless It Disenfranchises Black Voters<\/a> The post Jonathan Turley Defends Virginia Redistricting Opinion By Refusing To Explain It<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, a majority of Virginia\u2019s supreme court voted to overturn a statewide election approving new congressional maps. Technically, voters were asked to vote on a constitutional amendment allowing the state legislature to create new maps in response to Donald Trump asking Texas (and other Republican-controlled state governments) to redraw their maps to dilute Democratic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Jonathan Turley Goes Full Tin Foil Hat About Viktor Orban Loss<\/a>
Jonathan Turley Watches ICE Kill A Woman, Asks Why Democrats Are So Upset<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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Jonathan Turley Goes Full Tin Foil Hat About Viktor Orban Loss<\/a>
Jonathan Turley Watches ICE Kill A Woman, Asks Why Democrats Are So Upset<\/a><\/p>\n