New Yorkers sue state elections board as battle over House maps intensifies [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Mon 27 Oct 2025 17.49 EDT
Last modified on Mon 27 Oct 2025 17.51 EDT


A group of New Yorkers has filed a lawsuit against the state’s board of elections alleging that its congressional map unconstitutionally dilutes the voting power of Black and Latino residents of Staten Island. The complaint, filed Monday, is another volley in the battle between Democrats and Republicans to redraw congressional districts in a way that favors their party in advance of the midterm elections.

The suit concerns the 11th congressional district, which is represented by Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, and challenges part of the map approved by the majority Democratic New York legislature less than two years ago. But in the wake of Donald Trump’s call for Texas and other red states to redraw their maps to help the party pick up more seats in 2026, Democrats have responded by trying to do the same thing in states like California and Maryland.

Democrats in California and New York trying to counter Republican efforts could be hurt by their own efforts to prevent gerrymandering, said Michael Kang, a law professor at Northwestern University and an expert on redistricting.

“The Democrats are trying to respond, but they have much greater obstacles – legal obstacles – in their way in places like California and New York, where they have engaged in this kind of good government redistricting reform and put hurdles in the way of being able to partisan gerrymander and do so on a mid-decade basis,” Kang said. In New York, the lawsuit was filed by Elias Law Group, which has also worked with Democrats on court cases concerning redistricting and congressional maps in Texas, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/27/new-york-elections-board-lawsuit-map