The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday overturned its state’s redistricting referendum, stalling Democratic efforts to gain more seats in the House.Four justices on the seven-seat court bench voted in favor of overturning the high-stakes legislative effort, while three justices voted against doing so. The justices ruled that the Virginia legislature’s Democratic majority did not follow proper procedure in approving the referendum to redraw the commonwealth’s congressional maps before sending it to voters and, in doing so, “placed the cart before the horse.”Voters narrowly passed the referendum last month. Roughly 50.3 percent of the state voted in favor, giving their representatives a chance to squeeze more Democratic seats in the U.S. House before midterms. The referendum passed despite a 2020 state policy that relegated redistricting to 10-year intervals aligned with the national census.The new maps were expected to alter the state’s congressional split to overwhelmingly favor Democrats, switching from 6–5 to 10–1.The president, in turn, was thrilled. “Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” Donald Trump posted to Truth Social shortly after the news broke. “The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander.”The decision comes two days after FBI agents raided the business office of L. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth, a senior leader in the Virginia Senate who played a key role in the redistricting effort. Sources that spoke with The New York Times claimed that the search was related to an investigation that began under former President Joe Biden, examining potential corruption tied to Lucas’s businesses.Friday’s ruling effectively puts an end to the most watched redistricting effort in the nation, though it’s not the only attempted redrawing that has kneecapped Democratic hopes to gain more seats in Congress. In neighboring Tennessee, lawmakers approved a new map Thursday that will give Republicans all nine seats in the House, squeezing out the state’s last Democratic district and carving up the only majority-Black congressional district in the Big Bend State.This story has been updated.