10-1 doesn’t have to be dead, if Virginia Democrats could just show some courage

Attorney General Jay Jones and House Speaker Don Scott have filed an appeal for an emergency hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on the Supreme Court of Virginia ruling invalidating the “Yes” votes of 1,604,276 Virginians in last month’s congressional redistricting referendum.

Which is just a political stunt, because the 6-3 Trump Court isn’t even going to give the request cert to hear the appeal, and if it somehow did, it wouldn’t overturn the state Supremes.

The Trump Court was the ultimate firewall in the MAGA scheme to make sure Virginia wouldn’t be able to create four new Democratic seats in its congressional delegation.

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ICYMI

• Four Virginia Supreme Court justices white out 1,604,276 ‘Yes’ votes
• The main beneficiary of the Supreme Court redistricting ruling: Ben Cline

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This move by Jones and Scott is just political theater – intended to get the Trump Court on the record effectively invalidating the will of 1,604,176 voters who want their congressional lines redrawn to benefit Democrats, days after it validated the effort of several Southern MAGA state legislatures to redraw their congressional districts to benefit Republicans.

Democrats don’t think further than the next ineffectual TV ad they can have a consultant throw together for them that won’t move the needle.

If Jones, Scott et al in the Virginia Democratic Party leadership really want the 10-1 map that 1,604,276 voters approved last month, there’s this scenario laid out by Quinn Yeargain, a constitutional law professor at Michigan State.

“They have a simple – and lawful – solution: Send the entire court into early retirement,” Yeargain wrote on The DownBallot Substack.

The case: the Virginia Constitution gives the General Assembly the power to set “the mandatory retirement of justices and judges after they reach a prescribed age, beyond which they shall not serve, regardless of the term to which elected or appointed.”

Current Virginia law sets the mandatory retirement age at 73, but as Yeargain points out, “this number is arbitrary.”

“Make it 54 for Supreme Court justices – the age of the youngest justice, Stephen McCullough, who joined the majority opinion – and make it take effect immediately,” Yeargain posits, suggesting that the General Assembly could attach the new provision to the state budget, and – voila, problem solved.

A new court would re-hear the case, yada yada yada, and the 10-1 map approved by the voters is the new law of the land.

Guarantee you, this is what Republicans would do if the situation was reversed.

Also guarantee you: Democrats won’t do this, because Democrats want to be seen as playing fair.

Which is why the country is in the mess it’s in, and may never get out of.