DAILY KOS
NY Redistricting: New York's highest court struck down the state's new maps for Congress and the state Senate on Wednesday, ruling in a bitterly divided 4-3 opinion that lawmakers did not have the authority to take over the redistricting process after the state's bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on new districts. The Court of Appeals ordered the trial court handling the case to work with a special master to adopt replacement maps "with all due haste" and suggested that primaries for affected races be moved from June to August.
Under an amendment to the state constitution, referred by the legislature and passed by voters in 2014, new maps were to be drawn by the misleadingly named Independent Redistricting Commission, which in fact is not independent as that term is commonly understood. Rather, eight of its 10 members are chosen by legislative leaders, with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and those eight then choose two unaffiliated commissioners. (A judge even struck the word "independent" from the ballot text describing the amendment, but the commission's name has nevertheless stuck.)
The amendment also requires that the panel approve any maps on a bipartisan basis; predictably, this evenly split body made up largely of political appointees deadlocked earlier this year. The legislature, where Democrats enjoy supermajorities in both chambers, then stepped into the gap to draw new maps on its own—a power the Court of Appeals now says it lacked.
What should lawmakers have done instead? The court was vague on that score, relegating the discussion to a footnote that included suggestions like "political pressure" and "more meaningful attempts at compromise" as possible "courses of action." Judge Jenny Rivera, in a dissent, argued that the majority's stance "leaves the legislature hostage to the IRC, and thus incentivizes political gamesmanship by the IRC members." Should the legislature have exhausted all of these remedies, it's not at all clear what the court would have the state do had the commission still failed to perform its duties.
The majority also went a step further: Despite ruling that the congressional map had no force of law from the get-go—"void ab initio" in legal parlance—it nevertheless further determined that it violated the constitution as a partisan gerrymander favoring Democrats. A different dissenter, Judge Shirley Troutman, called this part of the decision "an inappropriate advisory opinion," citing longstanding judicial precedent against the issuance of such opinions because the "function of the courts is to determine controversies between litigants." (In a third dissent, Judge Rowan Wilson offered a detailed rebuttal to the majority's finding of illegal gerrymandering.)
The practical effects of the court's decision will cause considerable upheaval to the state's political calendar. Notably, the candidate filing deadline passed weeks ago. As a consequence of this ruling, not only will the primary have to be delayed but campaigns will have to gather signatures to appear on the ballot a second time (1,250 for Congress and 1,000 for the state Senate)—a notoriously time-consuming and expensive process in New York. They may even once again have to fend off legal challenges to their petitions from rivals.
But barring an unlikely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that the Court of Appeals has intervened too late in the election cycle, congressional and senatorial hopefuls in New York can now only bide their time as the trial court develops new maps.