New York Democrats Are Looking to the Courts for a Path Forward on Redistricting

Democrats in New York are going to court to boost their quest to counter Republicans’ nationwide redistricting efforts.

Four voters from Staten Island and Manhattan filed a lawsuit in New York’s state Supreme Court on Monday alleging that the way boundaries were drawn for the state’s 11th Congressional District “dilutes Black and Latino voting strength.” The plaintiffs are asking the court to order the state Legislature to redraw the district — the only one in New York City represented by a Republican lawmaker — to absorb parts of lower Manhattan, a move that would likely flip the seat from red to blue.

The move offers new life to New York Democrats’ redistricting ambitions and could result in a mid-decade redraw of parts of the state’s Congressional map — something that would have otherwise been unlikely due to the state’s long and convoluted process for such changes.

Still, redistricting experts told NOTUS there’s a slim chance the lawsuit will actually move the needle nationally.

“This lawsuit is a long shot,” redistricting expert Justin Levitt, who is a former White House and Justice Department employee who worked on voting and civil rights issues for the federal government, told NOTUS. “Even if it succeeds, it would result in sort of a limited rearranging of the map.”

The lawsuit alleges that the shape of the 11th District, represented by GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, doesn’t take growing Black and Latino populations in Staten Island into account and thus breaks state laws that prohibit racial dilution of votes.

“CD-11’s antiquated boundaries instead confine Staten Island’s growing Black and Latino communities in a district where they are routinely and systematically unable to influence elections for their representative of choice, despite the existence of strong racially polarized voting and a history of racial discrimination and segregation on Staten Island,” the voters’ court filing said.

The New York lawsuit comes as proposals for new maps in other states have prompted a slew of litigation across the country.

New York’s typical mid-decade redistricting process requires multiple votes by the state Legislature across multiple legislative sessions. Without the lawsuit, New Yorkers wouldn’t be able to sway the national redistricting battle until the 2028 election at the earliest, said Jeffrey Wice, a redistricting expert and professor at New York Law School.

That said, the high-profile nature of the lawsuit means it is also likely to get tangled up in the courts, meaning it may not be much faster.

“We can pretty much be assured of intense Republican opposition to this, trying to delay and slow down the proceedings,” Wice told NOTUS. “The clock is ticking, and it’s hard to say now whether this is a case that will impact the 2026 elections, or it’s more for the long term.”

Republicans are already suggesting they’ll intervene. Malliotakis on Monday called the lawsuit “frivolous” and said in a social media post that “we defeated them twice before and we’ll do it again.”

A New York state court’s last major redistricting-related ruling also suggests there could be a narrow path forward for Democrats this time around.

An appeals court struck down a congressional map drawn by New York Democrats in 2022 on the grounds that the process for creating the map violated bipartisan procedural requirements and because the map itself was drawn with “impermissible partisan purpose.” Among other changes, that map would have combined parts of Brooklyn with Malliotakis’ Staten Island district, making it more competitive, like the plaintiffs in this case are looking to do.

New York’s existing map, drawn by a court-appointed neutral redistricting expert after that decision, went into effect ahead of the 2024 elections and restored some Republican advantages, including in the 11th District.

This case is “very much a part of multiple conversations that are happening right now, including

Democrats in New York trying to figure out how to get Democratic advantage,” Levitt said. “But I don’t think it’s the same as, ‘What if we had a path to completely redraw lines across the state?’”