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\n The Supreme Court<\/p>\n
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The Supreme Court on Monday\u00a0intervened\u00a0in New York’s redistricting process, blocking a lower court decision that would likely have\u00a0flipped a Republican congressional district into a Democratic district.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Monday’s\u00a0Supreme Court action deviates from the court’s hands-off pattern in these mid-term redistricting fights this year. In two previous\u00a0cases \u2014 from Texas<\/a>\u00a0and California<\/a> \u2014 the court refused to intervene, allowing newly drawn maps to stay in effect. \u00a0
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At issue is the midterm redrawing\u00a0of New\u00a0York’s 11th congressional district, including Staten Island and a small part of Brooklyn. The district is currently held by a Republican, but on Jan. 21, a state Supreme Court judge ruled that the current district dilutes the power of Black and Latino voters in violation of the state constitution. \u00a0
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GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who represents the district, and the Republican co-chair of the state Board of Elections promptly<\/a>\u00a0appealed<\/a>\u00a0to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to block the\u00a0redrawing as\u00a0an unconstitutional “racial gerrymander.” New York’s congressional election cycle was set to officially begin Feb. 24, the opening day for candidates to seek placement on the ballot. \u00a0
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As in this\u00a0year’s prior\u00a0mid-decade redistricting fights \u2014 in Texas and California \u2014 the Trump administration backed the Republicans.\u00a0 \u00a0
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Voters<\/a>\u00a0and the State of New York<\/a>\u00a0contended it’s\u00a0too soon for the Supreme Court to wade into this dispute. New York’s highest state court has not issued a final judgment, so the voters asserted that if the Supreme Court grants relief now “future stay applicants will see little purpose in waiting for state court rulings before coming to this Court” and “be rewarded for such gamesmanship.” The state argues this is an issue for “New York courts, not federal courts” to resolve, and there is sufficient time for the dispute to be resolved on the merits.\u00a0
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The court majority explained the decision to intervene in 101 words,\u00a0which\u00a0the three dissenting liberal justices\u00a0 summarized as “Rules for thee, but not for me.”\u00a0
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The unsigned majority order does not explain the Court’s rationale. It says only how long the stay will last, until the case\u00a0moves through\u00a0the New York State\u00a0appeals\u00a0courts. If, however, the losing party petitions and the court agrees to hear the challenge, the stay extends until the final opinion is announced.\u00a0
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Dissenting from the decision were Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Writing for the three, Sotomayor\u00a0 said that\u00a0 if nonfinal decisions of a state trial court can be brought to highest court, “then every decision from any court is now fair game.”\u00a0More\u00a0immediately, she noted, “By granting these applications, the Court thrusts itself into the middle of every election-law dispute around the country, even as many States redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 election.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Requests for Supreme Court intervention on redistricting issues has been a recurring theme this term, a trend that is likely to grow.\u00a0 Earlier last\u00a0month \u00a0the high court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map.\u00a0 California’s redistricting came in response to a GOP-friendly redistricting plan in Texas that the Supreme Court also permitted\u00a0to move forward. These redistricting efforts are expected to offset one another.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0
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But the high court itself has yet to rule\u00a0on a challenge to Louisiana’s voting map<\/a>, which was drawn by the state legislature after the decennial census in order to create a second majority-Black district.\u00a0 Since the drawing of that second majority-black district, the state has backed away from that map, hoping to return to a plan that provides for only one majority-minority district.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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The Supreme Court’s consideration of the Louisiana case has stretched across two terms. The justices failed to resolve the case last term and chose to order a second round<\/a>\u00a0of arguments this term adding a new question: Does the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority district violate the constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments’ guarantee of the right to vote and the authority of Congress to enforce that mandate?\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0
Following the addition of the new question, the state of Louisiana flipped positions to oppose the map it had just drawn and defended in court. Whether the Supreme Court follows suit remains to be seen. But the tone of the October argument<\/a>\u00a0suggested that the court’s conservative supermajority is likely to continue undercutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court Win McNamee\/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Win McNamee\/Getty Images The Supreme Court on Monday\u00a0intervened\u00a0in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-500351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}