The New York state Legislature will introduce two constitutional amendments this week that would change the state’s redistricting process in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that weakened a landmark Civil Rights-era law that has been credited for increasing minority representation in Congress and amid a larger national mid-decade redistricting arms race that has intensified over the last year, sources told Spectrum News on Wednesday.
Echoing comments from state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie last week, one amendment would allow for mid-decade redistricting and the other would remove some redistrictions on partisan gerrymandering.
As lawmakers try to cross the finish line on a contentious and nearly two-month late state budget, redistricting has been a heightened issue with the time lawmakers have left this year at the state Capitol. Session is scheduled to end on June 4. Sources said the amendments could be introduced as early as Friday.
The Supreme Court earlier this month ruled 6-3 in striking down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana that it said relied too heavily on race. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 bans voting practices that diminish or dilute the power of minority voters, which essentially has shown to have an impact on electing minority candidates.
That decision is wrapped up in an unusual national battle over redrawing congressional lines in the middle of the decade that started in Texas last summer at the request of President Donald Trump to help boost Republicans in the 2026 election cycle. California Democrats responded in kind. Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Tennessee have joined the effort, with Alabama pending, bringing red states and blue states into the gerrymandering fight to try to outflank the other for so-called safe seats and eliminate more competitive races.
The amendment on partisan gerrymandering would be a response to New York's messy redistricting process following the 2020 census. The congressional and state Senate maps drawn by the Democratic-led Legislature that year were struck down in 2022 by the state's highest court — the New York Court of Appeals — on mainly procedural grounds but also because the maps were "substantively unconstitutional as drawn with impermissible partisan purpose."
Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York lawmakers have promised a response since the initial move in Texas — even hosting Texas Democrats in Albany. U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also of New York, tasked Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, a veteran of the state Legislature, with steering New York Democrats' efforts to change the process.
To do any kind of redistricting changes, New York faces constitutional limitations. The state in 2014 approved a state constitutional amendment that created the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC), the panel which now oversees the process and was created to take the process out of the hands of the Legislature to begin with. Changing the process would require once again a state constitutional amendment. In New York, constitutional amendments must be passed by two separately elected versions of the state Legislature and then approved by a majority of voters. At the fastest rate, Democrats would have to pass an amendment to give back power to the Legislature this year and again after the 2026 elections, meaning it wouldn’t be put to voters until November 2027 at the earliest, with any kind of potential new maps not taking effect until the 2028 election.
New York Republicans have railed against the effort despite its roots in the Texas redraw.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source link ← Back to News