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Virginia's Supreme Court Rejects Prison Gerrymandering Lawsuit

Morgan Riley / Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SupremeCourtofVirginiaBuilding.JPG

The Supreme Court of Virginia is already weighing in on redistricting, closing the door on the practice of prison gerrymandering.

The court is rejecting a challenge to Virginia's new law ditching the longstanding practice of prison gerrymandering. That means the next set of maps for General Assembly and Congress will no longer include incarcerated people in the rural communities where prisons are located but instead count them at their home address or last known address.

Da'Quan Love at the Virginia NAACP says this is a victory for all Virginians.

"When a person is incarcerated, they're not the only person that's incarcerated," Love explains. "In reality, their entire family has a void that needs to be filled, and so it is not appropriate to have those resources artificially inflated due to temporary relocation of incarcerated individuals in some of those smaller rural communities."

The change will mean a huge loss for rural communities where prisons are located. Buckingham County Supervisor Jordan Miles says his county stands to lose more than 2,000 constituents.

"These people are sleeping, living, eating, breathing there — and more so there much longer than they ever will be again in the place they once called home," says Miles.

The end of prison gerrymandering also comes at a time when the newly created Redistricting Commission will be drawing the new maps instead of the General Assembly; a change complicated by late Census data which will likely lead to elections for the House of Delegates this year, next year and the year after that.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

Michael Pope is an author and journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria.