NY Court of Appeals to hear case seeking to redraw congressional district lines

In a case with national implications, New York’s top court will hear arguments Wednesday on whether the state’s 26 congressional districts should be redrawn for 2024.

It won’t be the first time the Court of Appeals has stepped into the state’s redistricting process. And like before, the outcome could figure into whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s election.

At issue is a follow-up lawsuit to the botched redistricting process in 2022.

A year ago, the Court of Appeals declared that maps drawn by the Democratic-led State Legislature were gerrymandered illegally and handed mapmaking duties to a court-appointed “special master.”

Those special-master boundaries were in effect when Republicans picked up seats in New York — including two on Long Island — and won control of the House.

Since then, Democrats have sued to get another crack at it. Their lawsuit contends the special master was a short-term solution — to make sure a set of maps was in place for Election Day.

Without such a time crunch, the proper process is to order the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission and the State Legislature to come up with new maps — as per the constitution — the Democratic side contends.

Republicans counter that redistricting, per the constitution, is a once-a-decade process and that the 2022 maps must be kept in place unless they violate the law in some way.

At the heart of the matter is determining whether the 2022 decision to go to a special master was done essentially on an “emergency basis” for the upcoming election and not for a decade, said Vin Bonventre, a professor at the Albany Law School of Union University.

“Usually, if you do something on an emergency basis, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was supposed to be any kind of permanent solution,” Bonventre said.

That said, he added: “Of course, the Democrats are motivated by the fact that they lost a bunch of seats last year and they want to win them back.”

Winning this case could produce new maps that give Democrats better odds of winning so-called swing seats on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, where Republicans prevailed a year ago.

John Faso, a former congressman who has helped Republicans strategize on the redistricting lawsuits, contends the 2022 decision was meant to apply for an entire decade. He said the Democrats’ new lawsuit is an “outrageous effort to get a do-over.”

Bonventre said the GOP has a “perfectly fine argument,” but the constitution might favor the Democrats’ claim that redistricting should be done by the Independent Redistricting Commission and the legislature.

“I think it is hard to argue it was done right the first time,” Bonventre said, referring to the court taking control and appointing a special master.

“Judicial remedies are really disfavored,” he said. “They’re OK when it’s the only way to resolve an issue right away.”

Eric Lane, a Hofstra University law professor, framed it similarly.

“Redistricting is fundamentally a legislative action. All judicial remedies are temporary,” Lane said. “The reason they’re done is always the same: There’s a time crunch.”

There’s another reason why the Court of Appeals could rule differently than in 2022: The composition of the seven-member bench has changed.

Janet DiFiore, the former chief judge who steered the court in a conservative direction, retired. She authored the majority opinion in the 4-3 decision that resulted in the special master drawing the state’s congressional maps.

Rowan Wilson, one of the court’s most liberal judges, moved up to chief judge. To fill his spot as associate judge, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Caitlin Halligan, a Democrat. 

But Halligan recused herself from the redistricting case.

The New York Law Journal, which broke the news, reported that Halligan checked a box on a recusal form citing she had a “close professional or personal relationship with a party or lawyer” involved in the matter.

Standard procedure in such instances is for the Court of Appeals to “vouch” in an appellate judge to have a full seven-member bench to hear the case. Here, Justice Dianne Renwick, an Appellate Division judge, was tapped to sit in for Halligan.

“She seems to be a liberal Democrat, but I don’t know if that says anything about how she votes on this case,” Bonventre said.

Further, Bonventre said it’s not a given that the three judges — Anthony Cannataro, Michael Garcia and Madeline Singas, the former Nassau County district attorney — would vote to stick with the maps drawn in 2022.

They could see that as a temporary solution, he said, and “this is a different case.”

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy