NYS appeals court must void election maps

The state Court of Appeals on Tuesday takes up the crucial case on redistricting, with potential national consequences for which party will control the House of Representatives. It will also be a test of the credibility of the state's top court.

Democratic supermajorities in the State Legislature approved new congressional maps that would slash from eight to four the number of Republican-favoring seats statewide. The problem: Gerrymandering was explicitly barred in 2014 when state voters approved a constitutional amendment that requires districts “shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.”

Yet there’s no other way to explain how the legislature, for example, put the center of the 3rd Congressional District in the middle Long Island Sound, throwing pieces of Westchester County, the Bronx and Queens in with parts of Nassau and Suffolk counties. Long Island’s CD1 was made Democrat-friendly by aligning Montauk and Orient Point with Nassau, while CD2 was designed as a safe space for Republicans.

It was an arrogant and embarrassing play by state Democrats. The only honorable path for the high court is to strike down these contorted districts — even as candidates relying on the maps have already completed the process to get on the June primary ballot.

There’s more to this court fight than the House seats. Chief Judge Janet DeFiore and her colleagues must also decide whether members of the Assembly and Senate violated the law when they brushed aside and effectively nullified the role of the first-ever Independent Redistricting Commission, instead drawing their own districts. While both lower courts rejected the House maps, they were split on the legislative maps.

Republicans brought the lawsuit, but the nonpartisan League of Women Voters makes a compelling argument that if this year’s stunted process is allowed to stand, the state's future efforts at an independent process will become a mockery. The court should order a do-over.

At this point, the top court should deploy the special master hired by the lower-court judge, reschedule the affected primaries for late August, and establish easier hurdles to get on the ballot.

The court should take encouragement from what happened in Maryland earlier this season. A longtime Democratic judge ordered Democratic-drawn maps rewritten — and primaries there were put off from March to July. And in Kansas on Monday, a judge tossed out a Republican redistricting from a legislature he said overreached its power.

All seven members of New York’s highest court were nominated by Democratic governors — six by Andrew M. Cuomo and one by Kathy Hochul. That shouldn’t predict how they will rule on this case. But their background will influence how this ruling is perceived and judged by a public eager for assurance that the judiciary, federal or state, makes impartial calls.

To provide that assurance, this court must smash the gerrymander.