Virginia to take redistricting fight to SCOTUS, misspells 'Virgnia' and 'Sentator' in brief

Democrats in Virginia, after their map to make the state 10-to-1 in favor of Democrats was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court, have filed a motion to bring the decision before the Supreme Court of the United States. In the filing, the lawmakers misspelled Virginia as "Virgnia" and Senator as "Sentator."

The document, filed on Friday, listed those appealing the decision as "DON SCOTT, in his official capacity as Speaker of the Virgnia House of Delegates, et al," misspelling Virginia in the document. When listing the Appellees, the document stated, "RYAN T. MCDOUGLE, Virginia State Sentator and Legislative Commissioner for the Virginia Redistricting Commission, et al," misspelling Senator in the document.

The filing was blasted by opponents of the Democrats' redistricting efforts online.

The Virginia GOP said in a post to X, "Hey @AGJayJones, @RyanMcDougle is a SENATOR in VIRGINIA—In case you need a spelling lesson. Maybe some of that $80M the Democrats spent on trying to rig a partisan gerrymander could have gone to a Grammarly subscription."

Former Attorney General of Virginia, Jason Miyares, said in response to the situation, "People have been surprised by the misspelling of 'Virginia' and 'Senator' in the court filings, but some saw this coming…….," and then shared a post from Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones where he spelled Attorney as "Attoney" in a press release. Jones was previously mocked over the other misspelling blunder as well.

The filing from the Virginia Democrats comes after the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a congressional map redraw that would have turned the Democrats’ plus-one-seat advantage (6 to 5) in the state to a plus-nine (10 to 1). Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger had previously claimed that she did not have plans to redistrict Virginia, but those plans changed only after she got into office.



The Virginia Supreme Court had ruled that the process by which the referendum for the map vote came about violated the state constitution, and stated, "We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy."