A lawsuit filed Monday seeks to redraw the boundaries of the only congressional district in New York City represented by a Republican, arguing that its current configuration unconstitutionally dilutes the power of Black and Latino voters.<\/p>\n
The case, filed by an election law firm on behalf of four voters, comes amid a national fight over congressional boundaries ahead of next year’s midterm elections, which will determine control of the narrowly divided U.S. House.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has pressured Republican-led states to redraw House districts to increase his party’s chances of maintaining control of the House, leading to a flurry of redistricting efforts across the country. Democrats have launched their own counter measures, but those efforts have often been blunted by laws intended to prevent partisan gerrymandering.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit in New York, if successful, could help Democrats in their quest to retake a House majority next year. <\/p>\n
The plaintiffs allege the district, which is represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, is drawn without accounting for a rise in Staten Island’s Black and Latino population and should be reconfigured to include parts of lower Manhattan, which leans more Democratic. <\/p>\n
As it currently stands, the district encompasses Staten Island, a conservative enclave, along with a nearby part southern Brooklyn that shares a similar political bent. Lower Manhattan is dominated by massive apartment and office buildings and is home to the city’s financial district. <\/p>\n
In a statement, Malliotakis called the case \u201cfrivolous\u201d and said the boundaries were \u201cenacted into state law by the state\u2019s independent redistricting commission, the Democrat-controlled state Legislature and Democrat governor.\u201d<\/p>\n
NYGOP Chair Ed Cox issued a similar statement, saying \u201cEveryone should see this effort for what it is: a naked attempt to disenfranchise voters in NY-11 and elect a Democrat to this Congressional District contrary to the will of voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state’s election board, which is named as a defendant in the case, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul had pledged to wade into the national redistricting battle, but has few options to substantially change the state’s congressional lines ahead of the 2026 midterms. <\/p>\n
Democrats in the state Legislature redrew the congressional map last year to give their party a modest boost in a few battleground districts, helping the party to pick up a handful of seats in the 2024 elections. Democrats currently control a majority of the state’s congressional districts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lawsuit filed Monday seeks to redraw the boundaries of the only congressional district in New York City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,56,63,65,64,87,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-19406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-ny","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-nyc-headlines","13":"tag-nyc-news","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-staten-island"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}