The US Supreme Court blocked Democrats from redrawing New York City’s lone GOP-held House seat following an emergency appeal from Rep. Nicole Malliotakis.
The order grants a stay, barring a state judge from redrawing the 11th Congressional District map ahead of the midterm elections.
Malliotakis had appealed to the high court earlier this month, after a Manhattan judge ruled her district’s current map — which links Staten Island and Southern Brooklyn — was “unconstitutional,” and ordered it redrawn in January.
“This evening, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a stay in the NY-11 case,” New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox wrote in a statement.
“This blatantly political case violated both the New York State and federal constitutions and, as Justice Alito stated, the lower court’s decision was a full-blown racial gerrymander,” Cox said.
A separate appeal from Republicans to halt the Dems’ attempts at redrawing the district lines was unanimously rejected by a mid-level state appellate court.
Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to keep New York’s 11th Congressional District intact helps restore the public’s confidence in our judicial system and proves the challenge to our district lines was always meritless,” Malliotakis wrote in a statement.
“The plaintiffs in this case attempted to manipulate our state’s courts to use race as a weapon to rig our elections. That was wrong and, as demonstrated by today’s ruling, clearly unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the politicization of New York’s courts and its judges necessitated action from the nation’s highest court,” she continued.
The plaintiffs argued in court that the existing maps – which no Democrats in the state legislature opposed when they were adopted in 2024 – had diluted minority black and Latino voters in the 11th District.
Democrats, with the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul, had launched the effort to redraw Malliotakis’ district in reaction to Texas allegedly gerrymandering its map to favor Republicans last year.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the high court recognizes it would’ve likely intervened if New York redrew the lines.
“Our stay, far from causing disruption or upsetting legitimate expectations, eliminates much of the uncertainty and confusion that would exist if the Independent Redistricting Commission proceeded to draw a new district that this Court would likely strike down if the cases reached us in time,” Alito wrote.
Justice Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion along with fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, called the stay an “unprecedented step” of the court’s intervention on redistricting matters.
“Time and again, this Court has said that federal courts should not interfere with state-court litigation,” Sotomayor wrote.
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