One day after the Virginia Supreme Court struck down their redistricting maps, Democratic lawmakers reportedly began discussing a scheme to lower the mandatory retirement age for the court's justices, a move that would clear the entire bench and let allies fill every seat.
The Daily Caller reported that the New York Times disclosed Sunday that Democrats were considering reducing the retirement age for Virginia Supreme Court justices from 75 to 54. The idea surfaced during a Saturday call among Democratic lawmakers that included House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The timing was not subtle: it came the day after the court handed Democrats a 4-3 loss on their congressional redistricting referendum.
The court found that the Democratic-led initiative violated the state constitution because it placed the redistricting amendment on the ballot after early voting had already begun. The proposed map had been expected to give Democrats a chance to pick up as many as four new congressional seats. When the court said no, the party's response was not to accept the ruling but to talk about removing the judges who issued it.
The reported retirement-age proposal would work through the state Legislature in Richmond, where Democrats control both chambers. Dropping the mandatory retirement age from 75 to 54 would force every sitting justice off the bench, creating a full slate of vacancies. Virginia's Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger would need to approve any such legislation. She has not publicly commented on the proposal, though she campaigned for the redrawn districts before Friday's ruling.
Democratic Virginia Rep. Suhas Subramanyam reportedly supported doing whatever was necessary to preserve the voter-approved map, including replacing the justices. His words on the Saturday call left little room for ambiguity.
"Everyone has got to have a strong stomach right now; this is a complete disaster waiting to happen if people are timid."
Subramanyam went further, framing the proposal as a response to what he described as Republican behavior in other states. He told participants:
"We have Republican states ignoring their constitutions and interrupting early voting and ignoring their Supreme Courts all together. We know based on that, Republicans would explore every single option possible to move this forward."
The Daily Caller News Foundation requested comment from Subramanyam's office and from Spanberger. The article did not report receiving a response from either.
The 4-3 decision Friday struck down the new congressional maps and declared the redistricting plan unconstitutional. The court's central finding was procedural: the legislature's approval of the constitutional amendment came after early voting had already started, a sequence that violated state law. The ruling effectively voided the map that Democrats had championed as voter-approved reform.
As the New York Post reported, the court declared the voter-approved redistricting plan "null and void." Republicans and President Trump celebrated the ruling. Trump wrote on Truth Social that "the Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats' horrible gerrymander." Mike Young, president of Virginians for Fair Maps, said: "On the first day Democrats tried to enact this scheme, we said it was illegal and unconstitutional."
The Virginia Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling ended what had been a months-long push to redraw the state's congressional boundaries in a way that could have dramatically shifted the partisan balance of the delegation.
Strip away the procedural details and the picture is plain. Democrats put a redistricting amendment before voters. They did so in a way the state's highest court found unconstitutional. When the court blocked the plan, party leaders did not challenge the legal reasoning or pursue a proper appeal. They discussed rewriting the rules to remove the judges.
This is not the first time redistricting battles have produced fierce partisan fallout. Across the South, legislatures have moved to redraw congressional maps in the wake of various court rulings. But there is a difference between redrawing maps within the legal process and proposing to gut the court that issued the ruling you disliked.
The retirement-age maneuver has no obvious precedent at the state level in modern times. It echoes, in spirit, Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 court-packing proposal, a plan that even many of FDR's own allies rejected as a dangerous assault on judicial independence. The Virginia version would go further: rather than adding seats, it would remove every sitting justice.
Rep. Jen Kiggans posted on X on May 11, calling the reported plan a "blatant power grab." She wrote that "Democrat politicians want to fire our Virginia Supreme Court justices and replace them with their 'yes' men."
Any legislation lowering the retirement age would land on Gov. Spanberger's desk. Her position matters more than anyone else's in this fight. She controls the final signature. Yet as of the Daily Caller's reporting, she had said nothing publicly about whether she would support or oppose the move.
That silence is itself a data point. Spanberger campaigned for the redrawn districts before the court struck them down. She has a political stake in the outcome. A governor who believed the proposal was reckless or unconstitutional could have said so immediately. She did not.
The broader context of recent court rulings that Democrats have contested suggests a growing willingness within the party to treat judicial independence as an obstacle rather than a safeguard, at least when the rulings go against them.
Consider the logic Subramanyam laid out. He did not argue that the court's reasoning was wrong on the merits. He did not cite a constitutional flaw in the decision. He argued that Republicans in other states have behaved badly, and therefore Democrats should feel entitled to do the same or worse.
That is not a legal argument. It is a permission structure for escalation.
The four-seat pickup that Democrats expected from the redrawn map helps explain the intensity. Redistricting is the quietest form of power politics. A favorable map can lock in an advantage for a decade. Losing that map, and losing it on constitutional grounds, left the party searching for a workaround measured in days, not months.
Meanwhile, the question of judicial vacancies and personnel changes at the highest levels of American courts continues to shape the political landscape in ways that affect every voter.
Several open questions remain. No specific bill text has been identified. It is unclear which justices would be affected beyond the obvious math, all of them, if the age drops to 54. Hakeem Jeffries's specific remarks on the Saturday call have not been reported. And the exact procedural path through the legislature remains undefined.
What is defined is the intent. Democrats lost a redistricting case on constitutional grounds and, within 24 hours, discussed removing every justice who sits on the court that ruled against them. The Virginia Supreme Court's decision to block the Democrat-backed map was grounded in the state's own constitution. The proposed response would treat that constitution as an inconvenience to be engineered around.
If Virginia Democrats succeed in clearing the bench, the precedent would not stay in Virginia. Every state legislature with unified party control would have a new tool: lose a case, rewrite the retirement rules, replace the court. Judicial independence would survive only as long as the ruling party found it convenient.
That is not how constitutional government works. Courts exist to check legislatures, not to serve them. The entire point of an independent judiciary is that it can say no to the people in power, even when those people control the statehouse, the governor's mansion, and the votes to retaliate.
Democrats have spent years warning about threats to democratic norms. They should look in the mirror. When you lose a case and your first instinct is to remove the judges, you are not defending democracy. You are dismantling it.
