New York Is Ordered by Appeals Court to Redraw House Map

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A New York appeals court on Thursday ordered the state’s congressional map to be redrawn, siding with Democrats in a case that could give the party a fresh chance to tilt one of the nation’s most contested House battlegrounds leftward.

Wading into a long-simmering legal dispute, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Albany said that the competitive, court-drawn districts put in place for last year’s midterms had only been a temporary fix.

They ordered the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission to promptly restart a process that would effectively give the Democrat-dominated State Legislature final say over the contours of New York’s 26 House seats for the remainder of the decade.

“In granting this petition, we return the matter to its constitutional design. Accordingly, we direct the I.R.C. to commence its duties forthwith,” Elizabeth A. Garry, the presiding justice, wrote in the majority opinion, referring to the Independent Redistricting Commission. (Two members of the five-judge panel dissented.)

Republicans vowed to appeal, leaving a final decision to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, just a year after it stopped an earlier attempt by Democrats to gerrymander the maps.

Why It Matters

The decision has potentially far-reaching political implications.

The current district lines were drawn by a neutral court-appointed expert last spring to maximize competition. The new map served that purpose, helping Republicans flip four seats en route to taking control of the House.

If Thursday’s ruling stands, both parties believe Democrats could conceivably draw maps that pass legal muster while making re-election almost impossible for incumbent Republicans like Representatives Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro in the Hudson Valley, or Anthony D’Esposito and George Santos on Long Island and in Queens, among others.

The case in New York is just one part of a national battlefield that is still being remade by court battles spawned by last year’s once-a-decade redistricting process.

New Democratic seats in New York could help offset gains Republicans are expected to make in North Carolina, where a newly conservative top court is allowing the party to replace a more neutral map, and potentially in Ohio. Democrats also won an unexpected victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in June that could net the party a handful of seats in the South.

Background

The legal fight over New York’s lines traces back to 2014, when voters adopted a constitutional amendment that outlawed gerrymandering and created a new bipartisan redistricting commission to minimize partisan mapmaking.

The first time the commission set out to draw district lines last year, though, it deadlocked between equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats. When the commission failed to even meet to complete its work, Democratic leaders in the Legislature commandeered the process and adopted lines giving Democrats clear advantages.

Republicans sued, and the Court of Appeals ruled that Democrats had not only gerrymandered the maps impermissibly, but also violated the 2014 redistricting procedures. It stripped the Legislature of its mapmaking authority, vesting it in the neutral expert.

Democrats filed a new lawsuit last year, paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, arguing that those maps were meant to be temporary and asking the courts to force the bipartisan commission to complete its work.

Though the commission would have the first shot at drawing the new maps under Thursday’s ruling, both parties expected the panel to deadlock again. That would send the final mapmaking authority back to the Legislature — only this time with the blessing of the courts.

Republicans are trying to block that possibility. On Thursday, party leaders said they would appeal.

“The Court of Appeals must overturn this ruling, or Democrats will gerrymander the map to target political opponents and protect political allies,” Representative Elise Stefanik said in a joint statement with Edward Cox, the top New York House Republican and state party chairman.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat, lauded the ruling and said the current map was undemocratic. Its lines were “drawn by an unelected, out-of-town special master appointed by an extreme right-wing judge, who himself was handpicked by partisan political operatives,” he said.

What’s Next

The Court of Appeals is now likely to once again have the final say.

The seven-judge panel was skeptical of Democrats a year ago, and could view the current lawsuit as an attack on its earlier ruling. But Thursday’s ruling shifts the burden to Republicans to argue why the top court should reverse the new status quo.

Importantly, the bench has also moved decidedly leftward since then, and is now led by a liberal chief judge, Rowan D. Wilson, who dissented from the 2022 decision.