Rep. Nicole Malliotakis may be cruising to reelection after all, after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered New York Monday to pause all efforts to redraw the Republican-held 11th Congressional District ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe case isn\u2019t over yet legally, but for the purposes of the 2026 elections, the map the Legislature enacted in 2024 remains in place and Nicole Malliotakis will run for reelection in the district that now includes Staten Island and Brooklyn,\u201d said Jeffrey Wice, a redistricting expert and professor at New York Law School.<\/p>\n
In the midst of national, politicized mid-cycle redistricting efforts driven by the Trump administration, New York Democrats had earned a small-scale legal win when a state court ordered in January that Malliotakis\u2019 district should be redrawn<\/a> to increase the voting power of Black and Latino residents. A mid-level appeals court unanimously affirmed<\/a> the ruling last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Malliotakis appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the justices sided with her in a 6-3 opinion to block the state\u2019s redistricting commission from redrawing the district. The court has requested responses from both sides and will continue to consider the emergency request, but the order indicates SCOTUS would likely squash any future state court decisions triggering a redraw \u2013 effectively blocking attempts to alter the district ahead of this year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n \u201cThese cases concern a state-court order that blatantly discriminates on the basis of race,\u201d Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a blistering concurring opinion, arguing that the New York Supreme Court\u2019s order to the Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw the district to benefit \u201cminority voters\u201d \u201cis unadorned racial discrimination, an inherently \u2018odious\u2019 activity that violates the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s Equal Protection Clause except in the \u201cmost extraordinary case.\u201d<\/p>\n Alito also wrote that the U.S. Constitution\u2019s Supremacy Clause prohibits the state court from \u201cauthoriz(ing) a violation of federal rights.\u201d Based on this, Alito wrote that Malliotakis would likely prevail in the end.<\/p>\n The federal justices also found the time frame set by New York\u2019s highest court to hear the merits of the appeal would not allow for ample time for Supreme Court review of the case to fit the election calendar, thus requiring the stay to be issued.<\/p>\n