On Thursday, Mar. 31, a New York trial court invalidated the legislature’s 2022 congressional and state legislative maps. The decision was primarily grounded in the procedural requirements of New York’s state constitution, which the court said the legislature violated when it adopted maps of its own after the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) failed to produce a second set of maps. Read the opinion.
According to the court, the constitutional provision creating the IRC allowed the legislature to draw maps only after the IRC submits 2 sets of maps and the legislature rejects them. The IRC deadlocked in Jan of 2022 before submitting a second set of maps and the legislature enacted its own maps according to a 2021 statute it passed allowing it to draw maps whenever the IRC failed to submit a map. The trial court found that the legislature did not have the power to enact the 2021 statute as it amounted to an override of the state constitution, which can only be done by the constitutional amendment process. According to the court, when the IRC failed to act, the matter should have been taken up by the courts to compel the IRC to continue work, or in the alternative, compel the legislature to appoint alternate members to the IRC.
The court took the opportunity to evaluate the congressional map and whether it was a partisan gerrymander in violation of the state constitutions’ prohibition on political gerrymandering and found it to be one based on expert testimony.
“What is clear from the testimony of virtually every expert (Trende, Lavigna, Barber and Katz). . . is that at least in the congressional redistricting maps the drawers packed Republicans into 4 districts thus cracking the Republican voters in neighboring districts and virtually guranteeing Demcrats winning 22 seats. In 5,000, 10,000 or 50,000 unbiased computer drawn maps there were several, and perhaps as many as 10 competitive districts. The enacted congressional map shows virtually zero competitive districts. Trende concludes and the court agrees that this shows political bias.”
Lawmakers were given until April 11 to enact new maps. The decision will be automatically appealed and will likely end up in the state’s highest court; the Court of Appeals.
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