ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday threw out the boundaries of the only congressional seat in New York City represented by a Republican, ordering the state to redraw the district because its current composition unconstitutionally diluted the votes of Black and Hispanic residents.
Republicans are expected to appeal the decision, as a new front opens in a national gerrymandering battle that has both political parties jockeying for advantage in the fight over control of the U.S. House.
Lawmakers in about a third of states have considered redrawing their House districts after President Donald Trump pushed Republicans to craft new lines that would help his party hold onto their narrow majority in the midterm elections. Though Democrats have sometimes been hampered by laws they passed intended to prevent partisan gerrymandering.
In New York, state Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Pearlman handed Democrats an early victory in the fight, ruling that a district held by Republican U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis in southern Brooklyn and Staten Island should be reconfigured.
The case, filed by an election law firm aligned with the Democratic Party, argued the lines of the district don't account for a rise in Staten Island’s Black and Latino population, instead pushing for the seat to be redrawn to include parts of lower Manhattan, which leans more liberal.
The judge said the petitioners had shown strong evidence of a “racially polarized voting bloc,” as well as “a history of discrimination that impacts current day political participation and representation,” and “that racial appeals are still made in political campaigns today.”
But rather than reshaping the seat himself, Pearlman ordered New York’s bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw the boundaries of the district by Feb. 6, a fast-approaching deadline.
The redistricting panel has the primary power to draw congressional maps, and is supposed to do so without gerrymandering the boundaries to give any party a political advantage. But, in the past, that commission has sometimes failed to reach an agreement on the makeup of a district, which has then given the Democrat-controlled state legislature the ability to tweak the lines in their favor.
Republicans had bashed the lawsuit as a clear effort to game the district to help Democrats and eliminate one of the few remaining GOP districts in the state. Home to around 500,000 people, Staten Island is New York City’s smallest and most suburban borough, better resembling nearby New Jersey towns than the metropolis of Manhattan, just a ferry ride across the river.
In a statement after the ruling, Malliotakis said, “This is a frivolous attempt by Washington Democrats to steal this congressional seat from the people and we are very confident that we will prevail at the end of the day."
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, had vowed to wade into the national redistricting fight but had few legislative avenues to substantially change the state’s congressional lines before the election.
The state’s current map was drawn by Democrats — after a protracted battle where they rejected a proposal crafted by the bipartisan redistricting commission — and was designed to give their party a boost in a few battleground districts ahead of the 2024 elections. Democrats picked up a few seats in New York under that map, though Republicans eventually won a House majority.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Wednesday's ruling "is the first step toward ensuring communities of interest remain intact from Staten Island to Lower Manhattan. The voters of New York deserve the fairest congressional map possible.”
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