Rule for democracy: New York’s highest court must strike down the Legislature’s unconstitutional hyperpartisan gerrymander
For about 70 minutes yesterday, the seven judges on New York’s highest bench, the Court of Appeals, questioned four lawyers over how 10 members of the bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission and 213 members of the Legislature should have redrawn legislative and congressional districts to represent the 20,201,249 New Yorkers counted in the 2020 census.
We stress “should have,” because it is without dispute that both the IRC and the Legislature failed to follow the Constitution. And the Constitution mandates that “a court is required to order the adoption of, or changes to, a redistricting plan as a remedy for a violation of law.”
Lawyers for the Assembly, for the state Senate and for the governor, in offering flimsy excuses for the nakedly gerrymandered handiwork of the chambers’ Democratic supermajorities signed by Gov. Hochul, all peddled varied shades of the same nonsense, trying to distract Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and the court from the simple truth and obvious remedy of new lines and moving the primaries from June to August. The lawyer for the voters suing to toss out this mess, backed by the original nonpartisan good-government group, the League of Women Voters, had a far more receptive audience, as every judge questioned the actions of the IRC and lawmakers.
Last year, the Legislature tried to impose its own power over redistricting through a constitutional amendment put before the voters on November’s ballot. The people said no. Thus the Constitution stands as written. And it is not the role of the Legislature to either interpret or violate the Constitution.
Because the trio of state defendants chose an intermediate appeal in order to try to run down the clock and that mid-level panel rightly established the facts, they can’t now ask the top court to rewrite the record. Still, they shamelessly did. For their part, the judges mulled whether to send the maps back to either the IRC or the Legislature. But they’ve had their chance.
All four living ex-governors agree that the lines are crooked. How can the judges decide otherwise?
