New York’s top court orders House map redrawn
NEW YORK — New York state’s top court on Tuesday ordered a panel to redraw the state’s congressional map for the 2024 elections, a major legal win for Democrats who had fought to dismantle controversial district lines drawn by an independent expert last year.
The 4-to-3 ruling from the Court of Appeals sends the redistricting process back to the state’s fractious Independent Redistricting Commission, which failed in its bipartisan bid to make the map last year, and could offer Democrats friendlier lines in some of the closest 2024 congressional races. Nationally, both parties saw the case as a key to establishing an upper hand in the battle for the House.
“We are holding the IRC and legislature to what the Constitution demands and will do so as often as necessary to secure compliance with its mandate,” Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the court’s majority opinion. “That said, we trust that the members of the IRC will act as the Constitution requires without further need for judicial intervention.”
The court ordered the panel to submit a map to the state Legislature by Feb. 28. The ruling, less than a year out from Election Day in 2024, promises to inject a significant dose of chaos into New York politics and, ultimately, to create a last-minute scrambling of House districts from Long Island to Lake Erie.
The legal battle, played out with limited public fanfare in courtrooms and political strategy sessions, figures to carry consequences for countless New Yorkers, who could see their representation in Congress affected for nearly the next decade.
It is unclear if the revised map will result in lines friendlier to the Democratic Party, but many members of the party argued that the map used in the midterms diluted Democratic voting blocs. Republicans flipped four New York seats in the midterms on their way to a narrow five-seat majority in the House.
Gov. Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James, two Democrats, issued a joint statement Tuesday asserting that the decision would “ensure all New Yorkers are fairly and equitably represented.”
Republicans had hoped redistricting would be done for the decade, and fought the Democrats over the court challenge.
The state Senate’s top Republican, Rob Ortt of Lockport, said the ruling completed Democrats’ efforts to weaponize and politicize the judicial system in New York. In a statement, he said the decision “diminishes the voice of millions of New Yorkers” and “marks the beginning of an era of partisan decision-making in New York’s highest court.”
The finding by the Court of Appeals in the case, Hoffmann v. New York State Independent Redistricting Commission, capped a lengthy legal drama over the fate of the House map, and could play a role in deciding control of the next Congress. Lower courts had split on the Hoffmann case.
The case was, in part, the product of another Court of Appeals ruling: In April 2022, the court rejected a map drawn by Democratic state lawmakers to boost their own party’s odds in midterm House elections. Last year’s ruling came after the Independent Redistricting Commission deadlocked, sending the redistricting process to lawmakers.
The Court of Appeals has shifted to the left since last year. The jurist who wrote the opinion voiding the Democrats’ map, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, resigned and was replaced by a liberal, Caitlin Halligan.
After Halligan recused herself in the Hoffmann case, her seat was filled by Dianne Renwick, an appellate division judge in Manhattan. Renwick offered the decisive vote in the Democrats’ favor, joining the three dissenters in last year’s case.
The three judges who joined DiFiore in the majority last year found themselves in the minority.
Writing for the dissenters in the Tuesday decision, Judge Anthony Cannataro accused the majority of explicitly overruling the previous decision, and of elevating “failed process above the People’s substantive rights to free and fair elections.”
Cannataro, a Westchester County Democrat, charged that the majority had behaved like the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that erased abortion protections in 2022.
Quoting the Supreme Court dissent in the abortion case, Cannataro wrote that the Court of Appeals reached its result for “one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed.”
He predicted the Independent Redistricting Commission might fail again, the Legislature might draw unfair lines again, and the court might have to hear a case on the matter — again.
“Short of the complete elimination of judicial review, a legislature determined to enact gerrymandered maps could not have asked for a more favorable ruling than they have received,” he wrote, adding that, in the majority’s opinion, “politics triumphs over free and fair elections.”
Wilson, the chief judge, at times went on the defensive in his majority opinion, suggesting that the ruling was not inconsistent with the finding last year.
He wrote that the decision in the last case, Harkenrider v. Hochul, was “silent” on how long the independent expert’s map should remain in place. He drew a distinction between the cases by saying the Independent Redistricting Commission has time to redraw a map before the next election, a luxury lacking when Harkenrider came before the court.
“Underlying all the dissent’s rhetoric,” he wrote, “is a complaint that this Court is forcing the IRC and legislature to follow the Constitution.”
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