Virginia Redistricting Ruling Revives Never-Litigated Questions About California's Prop 50 Scheme
By Jennifer Van Laar on May 08, 2026
When the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled Friday morning invalidating Virginia's redistricting initiative, my second thought (after excitement for my friends in Virginia) was how disappointed I was that Californians opposed to Gavin Newsom's Election Rigging Act weren't allowed to have their day in court regarding the questionable procedural maneuvers Democrats utilized to gut voter-approved constitutional protections around redistricting.
Despite what many claim, California's Proposition 50 hasn't been fully ruled on by the courts, either state or federal. State courts rejected petitions for writ and applications for stay completely out-of-hand, and the federal case is still pending. What was denied was an emergency injunction to block the use of the new maps while the federal suit proceeded.
Few realize that there were also state court challenges to Proposition 50 prior to the special election, based upon the Democrats' use of the gut-and-amend process to avoid a different provision of the California constitution requiring a 30-day waiting period, among other issues. For background, the legislation that eventually became Prop 50 was introduced on August 18, 2025, and passed on August 21, 2025.
As I explained at the time:
California's constitution requires a 30-day waiting period after a bill is introduced before any action can be taken. That amendment to the state constitution was passed by the voters in 1958, and when legislators attempted to decrease that waiting period to 20 days, voters overwhelmingly said no. The only way the waiting period can be waived is by a three-fourths vote of the legislature. Democrats don't have that many votes, so what they've been doing is claiming that a complete gut-and-amend meets the waiting period requirement, even though the only thing that was in print for 30 days was the bill number - and that's exactly what they argued Monday night when Republicans in both the Assembly and Senate objected to taking any action on the bill.
https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2026/05/08/ca-prop-50-litigation-vs-virginia-redistricting-n2202153#google_vignette
