Mike Lee

Senator Mike Lee, the Utah Republican, accused Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger Friday morning of attempting a “naked power grab," after the state’s supreme court rejected a Democratic gerrymandering effort.

“The Virginia Supreme Court: Reversing Abigail Spanberger’s naked power grab,” Lee said in a social media post.

The high court ruled that the General Assembly’s redistricting push violated the state constitution. Democratic lawmakers improperly introduced the plan for new congressional maps to referendum voters earlier this year, according to the bench. The revised districts, approved by residents last month, would have helped Democrats fight Republican gerrymandering that’s taken place across the country.

Spanberger expressed her disappointment over the ruling in a statement, describing the referendum as a voter-driven act of resistance to President Donald Trump’s redistricting efforts.

“More than three million Virginians cast their ballots in Virginia’s redistricting referendum, and the majority of Virginia voters voted to push back against a President who said he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress with a temporary and responsive referendum,” the governor said. “They made their voices heard.”

Trump launched the national gerrymandering war last year by directing Texas to draw new, Republican-friendly congressional maps in what was at the time a rare mid-decade redistricting attempt. States normally adjusted maps based on data from the U.S. Census, conducted at the start of each decade.

“We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats. We have a really good governor, and we have good people in Texas,” the president said in August. “And I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.”

Some Democratic states have tried to counter the GOP push with their own gerrymandered maps. Californians voted to suspend an independent redistricting commission last fall to secure five additional blue seats. Governor Gavin Newsom celebrated the proposition’s success as a win for the country.

“We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness,” he said the night of the measure’s passage.

Other Democratic and Republican states attempted to gerrymander in the following months, with mixed success. Virginia’s efforts enthused Democrats concerned about GOP gains, which were strengthened in late April by the Supreme Court’s weakening of the Voting Rights Act, a Civil Rights-era law that protected minority voting power.

Southern Republicans reacted to the high court’s decision by drawing their liberal representatives, some of whom are of color, out of congressional maps.