After spending nearly $100 million and winning a voter referendum, Virginia Democrats walked away with nothing. The Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene validates what Senate President Ferguson said all along.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
The U.S. Supreme Court closed the last exit ramp for Virginia Democrats on Thursday, declining to block a state court ruling that killed the party’s voter-approved redistricting overhaul ahead of the 2026 midterms. The justices’ refusal to intervene is the final word on a months-long legal saga that consumed tens of millions of dollars, upended an entire state election, and ultimately produced nothing.
For Maryland Democrats still agitating for a special legislative session to redraw their own congressional map, the message couldn’t be clearer — and Senate President Bill Ferguson has been saying it all along.
What Happened in Virginia
The Virginia Supreme Court struck down the state’s redistricting referendum on May 8 in a 4-3 decision, ruling that Democratic lawmakers had violated the state constitution’s multistep amendment process by advancing the proposal after early voting had already begun in the required intervening election. The majority found the procedural defect “incurably taints the resulting referendum vote,” nullifying an election that more than three million Virginians had participated in.
Virginia Democrats appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the state high court had improperly interpreted election law and overridden the will of voters. The Supreme Court declined to block the ruling. The redistricting effort — and the four potential Democratic House pickups that came with it — is finished.
The collapse comes after outside groups poured nearly $100 million into the Virginia referendum fight. The state spent $5.2 million to run a special election whose results a court then discarded. Democrats had argued they were simply countering Republican-led redistricting in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere. Instead, they spent a fortune and ended up worse than where they started — having strained institutional norms and handed Republicans a political argument about Democratic overreach, all without gaining a single seat.
Maryland’s Parallel Story
Maryland’s redistricting push followed a similar trajectory — with one key difference. Here, a single official put the brakes on before the train went off the rails.
Gov. Wes Moore convened a redistricting advisory commission last November, and in January, it recommended a new congressional map redrawn to make the state’s 1st Congressional District — currently held by Republican Andy Harris — more favorable to Democrats. The Maryland House of Delegates passed that map in early February on a 99-37 vote. Then the bill went to the Senate, and Senate President Bill Ferguson said no.
Ferguson’s objections were institutional and legal, not merely political. He pointed to the 2022 cycle, in which a Maryland court struck down the legislature’s initial post-census gerrymander as a product of “extreme partisan gerrymandering.” That court-drawn replacement is the 7-1 map Maryland currently operates under. Ferguson’s argument: approving a rushed mid-decade gerrymander invites another round of judicial review — one that could produce a Republican-friendly replacement. Maryland courts interpret the state constitution’s redistricting language differently than federal courts interpret federal law, and that exposure doesn’t disappear simply because Democrats want to fight back.
The Virginia outcome makes his case for him. Virginia Democrats followed a more elaborate process — a voter referendum, a special election, a constitutional amendment — and still had the entire effort voided on procedural grounds. Maryland’s proposed approach, a simple bill through a legislative session, would face the same Maryland Supreme Court that already threw out one Democratic map in living memory.
Ellis, Peña-Melnyk, and the Pressure Campaign
The legislative session ended in April without a new map, but the push didn’t die entirely. State Sen. Arthur Ellis, a Charles County Democrat who is also running for the 5th Congressional District seat being vacated by Steny Hoyer, has been the most vocal advocate for a special session. He held a news conference in Annapolis earlier this month, calling for lawmakers to return, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais — which weakened Voting Rights Act protections — as justification for revisiting the state’s maps.
House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk backed Ellis’s call, saying “the urgency is only greater” following the VRA ruling and that the House “stands ready to act.”
Ferguson’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the special session push. His silence is consistent with his position throughout the session: he has said the Senate would not revisit redistricting-related issues before 2032.
House Minority Leader Jason Buckel offered a more pointed assessment of Ellis’s campaign. “Senator Ellis is running for Congress,” Buckel said in a text. “I think his request for a special session on redistricting is merely an effort to draw attention to himself and his campaign and pursue partisan objectives to the detriment of Maryland citizens.”
Whether or not that characterization is fair, the procedural reality is straightforward: calling a special session requires the agreement of both the House Speaker and the Senate President. Peña-Melnyk is willing. Ferguson is not. Moore could call a special session unilaterally as governor, but even Ellis has acknowledged the political risk — and a new map couldn’t take effect in time for the 2026 primary in any case, given the filing deadlines that have already passed.
What the Virginia Collapse Actually Means for Maryland
The Virginia outcome does two things for Maryland’s political calculus.
First, it neutralizes the loudest argument for a special session. Advocates argued that Maryland had to act because Democratic states were falling behind in the redistricting wars, and that Virginia’s referendum could net four House seats if it survived. Virginia’s referendum did not survive. Those four seats are gone. The urgency framing — that Maryland needed to move to offset Republican gains nationally — is now considerably weaker.
Second, it reinforces Ferguson’s legal risk analysis. The Virginia Democrats who argued that procedural speed bumps were worth ignoring in service of a larger democratic purpose wound up with nothing to show for $100 million, a voided election, and lasting damage to the state’s redistricting commission — which was established by voters in 2020 precisely to remove the process from partisan legislative control. Maryland’s courts could reach the same conclusion on different grounds, applying the state constitution’s compactness and boundary requirements that already sank one Democratic map in 2022.
The more realistic path forward that Republicans will have to contend with — floated by Del. Marc Korman and others during the session — is a constitutional amendment to clarify that Maryland’s redistricting criteria apply to state legislative districts and not congressional districts, opening space for a more aggressive congressional map through the ordinary 2027 session for use in 2028. That path is slower, less satisfying to activists, sure to still cause conflict, and involves actually following the rules. It is also, given what just happened in Virginia, the only one that doesn’t end in a courtroom.
Harris and the 1st District
In practical terms, Andy Harris keeps his seat for at least another cycle. The Eastern Shore Republican, who was reelected in 2024 with nearly 60 percent of the vote, was the primary target of the redistricting effort. The proposed Democratic map would have carved up the 1st District to dilute his base.
That map is dead. Harris will run in November under the same boundaries he has won on repeatedly. Democrats will have to beat him the old-fashioned way, if they beat him at all.
The Bottom Line
Virginia Democrats spent the better part of a year and the equivalent of a small state agency’s annual budget trying to gerrymander their way to a midterm advantage, ran into the same procedural limits that constrain political actors in democratic systems, and lost. The U.S. Supreme Court saw no reason to rescue them from the consequences of cutting corners.
Maryland’s Senate President made a decision that frustrated a lot of people in his party, earned himself a primary challenger, and turned out to be correct. That’s not a comfortable thing for redistricting advocates to acknowledge. But accountability journalism is not always comfortable — and the facts here are straightforward.
Ferguson’s restraint wasn’t capitulation. It was institutional judgment. Virginia’s collapse is the proof.
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