Republicans urge Supreme Courtroom to revive New York congressional map

A Republican member of Congress, a gaggle of voters, and New York election officials asked the Supreme Courtroom to permit the state to proceed with the 2026 elections utilizing its current congressional map. This adopted an order by a state courtroom barring New York from utilizing the map, and requiring the state to redraw the map as a result of, in response to the state courtroom, it diluted the votes of Blacks and Latinos in the one congressional district in New York Metropolis represented by a Republican, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis. Malliotakis told the justices that the state courtroom’s determination would require the state “to undertake an unconstitutional racial gerrymander” – that’s, to kind voters primarily based on race. Peter Kosinski, a Republican co-chair of the state’s board of elections, echoed Malliotakis’ issues, telling the court that if it doesn’t put the decrease courtroom’s ruling on maintain “by February 23, 2026, New York’s congressional elections might be thrown into chaos and uncertainty.”

The district on the middle of the dispute is New York’s eleventh Congressional District, which relies on Staten Island but in addition extends into components of southern Brooklyn. In October 2025, a gaggle of voters went to state courtroom, the place they argued that the district’s boundaries violated the state’s structure by diluting the votes of Black and Latino voters, who now make up roughly 30% of the inhabitants of Staten Island, whereas the inhabitants of white voters has dropped to 56%. Particularly, they contended, the district’s boundaries didn’t give its black and Latino residents an equal alternative to elect a consultant of their alternative.

On Jan. 21, 2026, Justice Jeffrey Pearlman of the New York State Supreme Courtroom – a trial courtroom – agreed that the present map diluted minority votes in violation of the New York structure, and he prohibited the state from utilizing the map in upcoming elections. He additionally instructed the state’s impartial redistricting fee to finish a brand new map by Feb. 6.

Malliotakis, who had joined the lawsuit to defend the present map, and Kosinski, requested two totally different state appeals courts to pause Pearlman’s ruling. The New York Courtroom of Appeals, that state’s highest courtroom, dominated that it lacked the flexibility to listen to the case; the intermediate appellate courtroom has not but acted on their request. Beneath state legislation, the attraction additionally routinely put the portion of Pearlman’s order directing the creation of a brand new map by the redistricting fee on maintain.   

In filings distributed to reporters on Friday, Malliotakis and Kosinski then got here to the Supreme Courtroom, asking the justices to intervene. Malliotakis argued that Pearlman’s “determination clearly violates this Courtroom’s Equal Safety Clause case legislation by prohibiting New York from operating any congressional elections till it racially gerrymanders CD11 by ‘including [enough] Black and Latino voters from elsewhere,’ till the Black and Latino voters in CD11 management contested primaries and win most basic elections.”

Kosinski contended that in reaching his determination, Pearlman had “adopted a wholly new normal for vote dilution claims” that had been superior in a “good friend of the courtroom” transient fairly than by the litigants. “As a matter of due course of,” he wrote, “the trial courtroom can not reject the one normal litigated by the events” – which derived from the New York Voting Rights Act – “and undertake one thing wholly new”: a “novel three-prong normal” that might require map makers so as to add minority voters from elsewhere in order that (1) minority voters can choose their most well-liked candidates within the main election; (2) these candidates will often win the final election; and (3) the newly redrawn district will increase the affect of minority voters in order that they play a decisive function within the choice of candidates. Furthermore, he added, “[a]t this level it’s unimaginable for the IRC to suggest a brand new map, and for the Legislature to undertake any such map, in time for petitioning to start out on February 24, 2026.”

The Trump administration filed a “friend of the court” brief supporting the requests to dam the trial courtroom’s ruling. U.S. Solicitor Normal D. John Sauer contended that, in contrast to latest redistricting disputes which have come to the Supreme Courtroom from California and Texas, involving “thorny questions in regards to the relationship between partisan and racial gerrymandering … as States race to redraw their electoral maps earlier than the 2026 midterms,” this case presents “an open and unabashed racial gerrymander,” thereby violating the equal safety clause of the Structure.  

The courtroom has directed the voters difficult the present map to answer the requests by Malliotakis and Kosinski by Thursday, Feb. 19, at 4 p.m. EST.