Tim Anderson, a prominent Virginia Beach lawyer and Republican candidate running for the Virginia House of Delegates District 97, warned that the Democrats’ proposed constitutional amendment to change Virginia’s redistricting process is not legal, arguing that it violates the House of Delegates’ own procedural rules.
A redistricting constitutional amendment, HJ 6007, was filed in the Virginia House of Delegates this week after state legislators were called to convene for a surprise special session. The measure passed the House on Wednesday and was agreed to in the Senate on Friday.
On Friday’s edition of The John Fredericks Show, Anderson said the amendment was improperly advanced after only a single reading, despite House Rule 80, which, drawing from Jefferson’s Manual of Legislative Procedure, requires multiple readings for any constitutional change.
By rushing the resolution through, Anderson said Democrats rendered the action “void ab initio,” meaning legally null from the outset.
“Fundamentally, the House violated its own rules in passing this joint resolution,” Anderson explained. “Rule 80, which incorporates Jefferson’s rules, says that you have to have several readings of a joint resolution for a constitutional amendment.”
“Democrats just rolled in and did it on a first reading. That is in violation of House rules,” he added.
Although a Republican-led lawsuit in Tazewell County is already challenging the move, Anderson expresses skepticism about the courts’ willingness to intervene, citing his loss of faith in the judiciary after Trump’s 2020 election challenges.
Nonetheless, he said he is preparing to file his own lawsuit in January if the amendment passes again, assuming Democrats are still in control of the House.
“If it passes next year in January, there’s a very good legitimate argument that the House’s actions on Wednesday were void ab initio, and I don’t think a court can ignore that. So I’m spinning up on my side to get ready to file that lawsuit. It would be filed in late January and I think that’s the knockout punch,” Anderson said.
“Obviously, if we win the election, we’ll kill it on our side in January, but if that doesn’t happen, there’s a very legitimate legal argument that we can make after the second passing,” he added.
Anderson characterized the Democrats’ redistricting move as an unconstitutional power grab designed to cement the party’s control of Virginia’s congressional districts for years to come.
“In Virginia, we have 11 congressional seats. They are going to draw ten Democrat seats. This is not trying to balance out [the state]. This is to draw maps in such a way that ten Democrats will be representing Virginia in Congress,” Anderson stressed.
“They’re saying that this is just to fight Trump, but they made it all the way through 2030, which means it affects Trump’s midterms and it affects the entire next president’s four years. So this is a power grab. This has nothing to do with Trump. This gives them Congress for six years. That’s what they’re doing,” he added.
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Tim Anderson” by Tim Anderson. Background Photo “Virginia Capitol” by Martin Kraft. CC BY-SA 3.0.
