The Supreme Court blocked a Democrat congressional redistricting map in New York State late yesterday, overruling the highest court in the state who refused to issue a ban on the order by the state’s Supreme Court to create the new map.
The new map would have eliminated the only Republican district in New York City.
Here’s the news:
SCOTUS rules 6-3 that the New York Democrat redistricting map, which would have eliminated the only Republican congressional district in NYC, is likely UNCONSTITUTIONAL (as we all knew).
Congratulations to Staten Island and Rep. @NMalliotakis! pic.twitter.com/8PwtKF01XB
— New York Young Republican Club 🇺🇸🗽 (@NYYRC) March 2, 2026
Here’s more via SCOTUSBLOG:
The Supreme Court on Monday night cleared the way for New York to go forward with the 2026 elections using the state’s existing congressional map. Over the objections of the court’s three Democratic appointees, the justices granted a request from a Republican member of Congress, a group of voters, and state election officials to pause an order by a state trial court that would have required the state to redraw the map to add Black and Latino voters.
Justice Samuel Alito, who penned an opinion agreeing with the decision to put the order by Justice Jeffrey Pearlman of the New York Supreme Court, which is a trial court, on hold, called Pearlman’s order “unadorned racial discrimination.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented from Monday’s ruling in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, accused her colleagues in the majority of executing an “unexplained about-face” from its normal practice of staying out of cases involving state election litigation.
The case began as a challenge to the boundaries of New York’s 11th Congressional District, which includes Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn. A group of voters contended that the boundaries violated the New York constitution because they diluted the votes of the district’s Black and Latino residents, who make up roughly 30% of Staten Island’s population.
In late January, Pearlman ruled for the challengers. He prohibited New York from using the existing map and instructed the state’s independent redistricting commission to propose a new map by Feb. 6.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, the only Republican representing New York City in Congress, along with state election officials and New York voters, asked two state appeals courts to put Pearlman’s order on hold. The state’s intermediate appellate court declined to do so on Thursday, Feb. 19.
Meanwhile, the map’s defenders came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to step in and block Pearlman’s order. In a one-paragraph, unsigned order on Monday night, the court granted that request.