NY Democrats’ fight to redraw congressional maps heads to court

A New York court is set to hear arguments Thursday over the state’s congressional maps in a case that poses high stakes for Democrats as they look to make up lost ground in the Empire State.

Democrats want to have the state’s bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) redraw congressional maps after Republicans flipped a handful of House seats last November, delivering them a narrow House majority.

The party is allocating tens of millions of dollars to target districts held by House Republicans, including Reps. George Santos, Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler and Brandon Williams, as Democrats seek to win back the majority in 2024.

“The eyes of the nation are upon us in New York,” said Democratic strategist Peter Kauffmann. 

“The folks that were in charge of drawing up the lines this last time around overshot and got bitten by it, and we’re not going to make that same mistake again,” he added.

New York Democrats are still reeling from November, when the state offered an unexpected gift for the GOP as several presumably safe Democratic House seats flipped red. D’Esposito and Santos won blue seats in Long Island, while Lawler unseated former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who was the chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm that cycle.

Aiding Republicans in taking control of the House was a stalemate within the bipartisan commission tasked with drawing the maps. Instead, a court-appointed expert designed the boundaries used in November, creating lines that proved more favorable for Republicans.

New map before 2030?

A state appeals court on Thursday afternoon will weigh whether that congressional map should remain in place until after the next census — or whether the bipartisan commission should be given another shot.

Democrats, for their part, are eager to see the maps redrawn. 

“I think the IRC should have an opportunity to do it again,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told The Hill, saying he believed the lawsuit had merit. 

Nadler was forced into an awkward member-on-member primary against former Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) last cycle because of the court-appointed maps. Other Democratic incumbents in the state, including Sean Patrick Maloney and former Rep. Mondaire Jones, also lost reelections after redistricting shifted their House constituencies.

The extended legal battle is a far cry from roughly a decade ago, when the creation of the IRC was hailed as a transformative initiative.

“This agreement will permanently reform the redistricting process in New York to once and for all end self-interested and partisan gerrymandering,” then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said of the plan in 2012.

But in its first redistricting cycle, the commission couldn’t reach a consensus. First, it sent dueling proposals in January 2022, both of which the legislature rejected. Despite being required to submit a second set of maps under the state constitution, the commission deadlocked and refused to send a new design.

That led the Democratic-controlled legislature to draw its own maps. But New York’s highest state court struck them down, finding the lawmakers overstepped their authority. Lower courts found that the congressional map amounted to an illegal partisan gerrymander.

A court-appointed expert was tasked with drawing congressional districts, which were used in the 2022 midterms. That led to significant Republican gains across the state in areas like Long Island and the Hudson Valley.

Democrats want IRC to draw new maps

Now, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and Attorney General Letitia James (D) are backing a lawsuit filed by voters demanding the IRC reconvene to draw the second set of maps it never submitted.

“The result of this opaque and truncated process — a clear and dramatic departure from the constitutionally mandated map-drawing process adopted by New York voters — was that the Steuben County Supreme Court’s adopted plan split longstanding minority communities of interest for reasons that remain unclear,” the voters wrote in their brief.

A trial court dismissed the lawsuit, finding the IRC was powerless to submit a second set of maps because the state constitution imposed a deadline of February 2022 to do so. The court further found having the IRC reconvene would be futile.

If the ruling is allowed to stand, the congressional map will remain in place through 2030, bolstering Republican chances of maintaining their gains. The losing side in the appeals court could further appeal the ruling, which is expected.

“The People’s right to a congressional map that gives effect to the Legislature’s right to cure, by employing the IRC process, should not be disregarded for the next four congressional elections,” Hochul and James wrote in their brief.

Three of the 10 commissioners are also backing the effort.

Republicans argue maps are settled

But attorneys representing five other commissioners and the plaintiffs who got the legislature’s map thrown out will oppose the attempt before the appeals court on Thursday. They argue the court-appointed expert already remedied the IRC’s failure and that the voters’ lawsuit was filed too late.

“The very section of the state constitution that Appellants point to as having been violated by the IRC in failing to submit a second set of maps, Article III, §4, also provides that a court may order a remedy for such violation,” the five commissioners wrote in their brief. 

“That judicial remedy, a court-ordered plan, is thus not outside of, but is itself built into, the constitutional process,” they added. “And here, the constitutional redistricting process, as it pertains to the congressional districts, had already been fully navigated and completed prior to this proceeding.”

Republicans are projecting confidence over the lawsuit. Former Rep. John Faso (R-N.Y.), who’s worked with GOP petitioners amid the legal challenges to the map, argued the only remedy last cycle was to have a judicially imposed map, given efforts to draw the map by the IRC and state legislature had been thwarted.

“I really think that the courts, just like the lower court judge refused their arguments or rejected their arguments, I think the appellate courts will do the same,” Faso added.

Lawler, whose seat is already rated as a “toss-up” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, also said he believes the state’s constitution and precedent are on the GOP side. And he wasted no time in taking a jab at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who pushed back against the state’s redrawn maps last cycle, saying, “Jeffries should be embarrassed by his conduct throughout this entire episode.”

“The state constitution is very clear that you do not have mid-decade redrawing of maps. This is a 10-year map. We have precedent from 2012 of a court-appointed special master drawing a 10-year map, and that’s exactly what happened here,” he told The Hill. “The Democrats tried to rig the system, they got smacked down. They got whooped in the elections, and now they’re trying to rig it again.”

Justin Chermol, a political spokesperson for Jeffries shrugged off the criticism, telling The Hill in a statement, “MAGA Mike is having a meltdown. What else is new?”

Still, the possibility of new maps isn’t deterring Lawler. Asked if Lawler had concerns his district could be redrawn and made more competitive, the New York Republican put it bluntly: “Bring it on.”