WASHINGTON — The Virginia Supreme Court gave Republicans a massive victory Friday by ruling that Democrats unlawfully ratified a lopsided congressional map to give themselves four more House seats in the midterm elections.

The 4-3 decision declares the recently voter-approved gerrymander “null and void” — giving Republicans a clear advantage in the nationwide redistricting war.

Virginia is currently represented by six Democrats and five Republicans in the House. The ruling dashes Democratic dreams of cruising to a 10-1 delegation.

“On the first day Democrats tried to enact this scheme, we said it was illegal and unconstitutional,” said Mike Young, president of Virginians for Fair Maps. “Here we are months later, and it’s illegal and unconstitutional.”

Analysts said the map drawn by state Democrats and narrowly passed in the April 21 referendum would have bolstered Democratic odds of retaking the House in November with four additional seats.

Dave Wasserman, senior editor and redistricting expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said the court decision was “a massive setback for Democrats” who will now need to pick up a net of “more like 10 seats to win control of the House, rather than just three.”

Wasserman now projects Republicans “will pick up somewhere in the six to seven-seat range from redistricting” alone because of GOP redrawn maps that have either passed or are pending in Texas, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama.

While Democrats are “still the favorites to regain the House,” Wasserman said, “Republicans have a more realistic chance of holding their majority than they did prior to this ruling and the [Louisiana] Supreme Court decision.“

The US Supreme Court last week upended a section of the Voting Rights Act in a ruling that favors Republicans by allowing states to carve up majority-minority congressional districts represented by Democrats. As a result, Louisiana postponed its primary election to update its congressional map; Tennessee passed a new map that got rid of its Democratic district, and Alabama is seeking to do the same.

The tit-for-tat redistricting fight across the country is closely linked to plans hatched by former White House deputy chief of staff James Blair to gird Trump’s political agenda for the final two years of his term.

At points, Republicans seemed to have miscalculated, with California responding to Texas redistricting by redrawing its own map, and then Virginia seeming likely to swing the arms race toward Democrats.

“A lot of overpaid operatives in DC owe James Blair an apology right now,” a GOP consultant close to the White House told The Post of the Trump aide, who recently took a hiatus from the West Wing to focus on the election.

President Trump cheered Friday’s ruling, writing on Truth Social: “Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander.”

“Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters. 

“The Virginia Supreme Court sided with the rule of law and struck down Democrats’ unconstitutional maps. The RNC led the charge in court against this blatant power grab, where Virginia Democrats poured more than $66 million into an effort to lock in control and silence voters. We took them to court, and we won.”

The Virginia ruling, the Voting Rights Act decision and states’ race to pass new maps all have upended the 2026 midterm landscape.

As of Friday, there are just 19 House seats out of 435 that are considered true toss-ups, according to 270towin.com — including GOP Rep. Mike Lawler’s 17th Congressional district in New York.

Democrats are favored to win 207 seats, while Republicans are expected to win 209.

Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, said in a statement: “We respect the court. But we will keep fighting for a democracy where voters — not politicians — have the final say. Because in Virginia, power still belongs to the people.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom accused MAGA Republicans of rigging the 2026 election by overturning voters’ will in Virginia, while keeping gerrymandered GOP maps passed by lawmakers in red states.

“Virginia’s voter-approved maps thrown out,” he wrote. “MAGA has rigged the system.”

Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the Virginia legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”

Because Virginia’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose an amendment to redraw the districts. That required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with the state’s 2025 gubernatorial and legislative election sandwiched in between, to place the amendment on the ballot.

The legislature’s initial approval of the amendment occurred this past October — while early voting was underway but before election day, Nov. 4.

The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January of this year. Lawmakers also approved a separate bill in February laying out the new districts, subject to voter approval of the amendment.

The arguments focused on whether the October approval came too late, since early voting had already begun.

Attorney Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued that the “election” should be defined narrowly to mean Nov. 4. In that case, the legislature’s first vote on the redistricting amendment occurred before the election and was constitutional, he told judges.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas McCarthy, argued that an “election” should be interpreted to cover the entire period during which people can cast ballots, which lasts 45 days in Virginia. If that’s the case, he told justices, the legislature’s initial endorsement of the redistricting amendment came too late to comply with the state constitution.

The majority agreed with McCarthy, with Kelsey writing: “While the Commonwealth is free by its lights to do the right thing for the right reason, the Rule of Law requires that it be done the right way.”

“[V]oting in the general election for the House of Delegates began on September 19, 2025, and ended on Election Day, November 4, 2025. The General Assembly voted for the first time to propose the constitutional amendment to the electorate on October 31, 2025. By that date, over 1.3 million votes had been cast in the general election, which was approximately 40% of the total vote for that election cycle,” wrote the justice.

By attempting to hold that the statutory definition of “election” only applies to Election Day, Kelsey added, Virginia legislators “ended up denying over 1.3 million Virginians their constitutional right to have a voice in the debate over whether their Constitution should be amended.”

With Post wires