New Yorkers sue state elections board as battle over House maps intensifies

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Mon 27 Oct 2025 17.49 EDT
Last modified on Mon 27 Oct 2025 17.51 EDT


A group of New Yorkers has filed a lawsuit against the state’s board of elections alleging that its congressional map unconstitutionally dilutes the voting power of Black and Latino residents of Staten Island. The complaint, filed Monday, is another volley in the battle between Democrats and Republicans to redraw congressional districts in a way that favors their party in advance of the midterm elections.

The suit concerns the 11th congressional district, which is represented by Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, and challenges part of the map approved by the majority Democratic New York legislature less than two years ago. But in the wake of Donald Trump’s call for Texas and other red states to redraw their maps to help the party pick up more seats in 2026, Democrats have responded by trying to do the same thing in states like California and Maryland.

Democrats in California and New York trying to counter Republican efforts could be hurt by their own efforts to prevent gerrymandering, said Michael Kang, a law professor at Northwestern University and an expert on redistricting.

“The Democrats are trying to respond, but they have much greater obstacles – legal obstacles – in their way in places like California and New York, where they have engaged in this kind of good government redistricting reform and put hurdles in the way of being able to partisan gerrymander and do so on a mid-decade basis,” Kang said. In New York, the lawsuit was filed by Elias Law Group, which has also worked with Democrats on court cases concerning redistricting and congressional maps in Texas, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/27/new-york-elections-board-lawsuit-map

[FBaggins]

1. Clever... but can it work?

The legislature has begun the process of amending the state constitution to allow them to draw new lines - but that can’t happen in time for the 2026 election. So here comes Elias with his lawsuit.

Who is on the other side? The overwhelmingly blue state legislature that drew these lines just last year. Do they fight the case? Of course not… they say “we’re so sorry that we do that. Are you willing to settle if we fix it now?” Then we get a court-approved settlement requiring the legislature to redraw the lines to fix the problem.

The question is whether that will be allowed - particularly if SCOTUS changes the rules underpinning such a move.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. The SCOTUS is about to kill Sect. 2 of the VRA

essentially eliminating the whole thing and then they will consider the issue closed and cite what amounts to "states rights" regarding the machinations regarding their election process.

The CBC hit a record number of members in this current Congress (119th) - ESSENCE: Congressional Black Caucus Hits Historic Milestone With 62 Members In The 119th Congress (1/4/25)

The SCOTUS will make sure that they eliminate every single one of them as was done after Reconstruction.

[FBaggins]

3. Yes - But I suspect Elias expects that

I haven't read the lawsuit yet, but my bet is that he's bringing this under New York law and/or constitution rather than the federal VRA.

I can't see how it could win in a truly adversarial process because they're claiming that a growing black/hispanic population can't pick the candidate of their choice... but SI is more heavily hispanic than black and their representative is hispanic. But this won't be an adversarial process.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Here is Elias' summary of the case

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/voters-challenge-new-york-congressional-map-targeting-gop-seat/

Suit is in state court and is complaining about the map that was put in place for 2024. It doesn't seem to be saying anything about the current re-look at redistricting related to the Texas nonsense, but could obviously factor in as they look at redrawing the 2024 lines.

(they had lost something like 5 seats in 2022 but regained 3 of them in 2024 with their current map)

[Karma13612]

5. Are you talking about Marcus Elias?

I’m pretty sure he’s “on our side’ about all this.
I don’t see how a lawsuit brought by him will end up hurting us.

Am I missing something??

[FBaggins]

6. Yes - and he's definitely on our side

The people he's suing are also on our side (Hochul, James, etc.)

The lawsuit can't hurt us. The worst that can happen is that it gets thrown out and we're right where we are now (waiting for 2028 to pick up a couple NY seats before losing them after the 2030 census).

[Karma13612]

7. Oh, OK!

Thank you for the deets on this.