NY courts must end Democrats’ gerrymandering war on democracy
Outrageous: New York judges just gave Democrats another crack at gerrymandering the state’s House districts to disenfranchise as many Republicans as possible.
Reversing that Appellate Division ruling will be up to the state Court of Appeals — which state Senate Democrats may have stacked to be a rubber stamp.
Make no mistake: The current districts fully reflect the public’s will.
Voters in 2014 rewrote the state Constitution to mandate a fair redistricting process, explicitly banning ones “drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.”
And voters re-affirmed that language in a statewide 2021 referendum.
But in the wake of the 2020 Census, state Democrats went all-out to gerrymander anyway.
They first engineered a deadlock on the bipartisan panel the Constitution charges with drawing up new electoral districts.
Then (without waiting for panel to take another try, as the law clearly dictates) the Legislature’s Democratic supermajorities rammed through maps transparently designed to district the GOP into oblivion — to all but ensure the Empire State would elect 22 Dems to the House and just four Republicans.
The GOP would get just 15 of 63 state Senate seats.
Republicans went to court to enforce the Constitution — and won, with the CoA in 2022 upholding the trial court judge’s decision to appoint a special master to draw up fair, nonpartisan maps.
Under those maps, New York Republicans that fall gained four House seats, rather than losing four — a difference that was key to the GOP takeover of the House.
Of course, because the districts are fair, the GOP might well have lost some of those gains come Election Day 2024.
But a fair fight isn’t good enough for New York Dems.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-B’klyn), the new House minority leader, used national Democratic funds to pay for a lawsuit to allow a re-redistricting.
The suit failed at trial — but now the Appellate Division has reversed the ruling (on a narrow 3-2 vote), ordering a do-over that everyone knows Dems will use to gerrymander again.
Republicans will appeal to the state’s highest court, but Dems have already done their best to put a fix in there, too.
This was the overriding purpose behind the assassination of Gov. Hochul’s nomination of Judge Hector LaSalle to become New York’s next chief judge.
LaSalle is a principled liberal who might’ve voted to stop this new scheme.
Instead, CoA Judge Rowan Wilson, who’d voted to allow the original 2022 gerrymander, got the top job. And the open seat on the high court got filled by Caitlin Halligan.
And she’s seen as a close ally of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who endorsed that gerrymander literally on the grounds of her loyalty to the Democratic Party. (That’s why you may want to google “Hochulmander” to get all the background here.)
In short, rancid scheming and partisan manipulation of the courts has New York on the verge of becoming a permanent one-party state, despite the clear language of the Constitution and the voters’ clear, repeated demands for fairness.
To stand up for judicial independence and the rule of law, the Court of Appeals ought to issue a unanimous decision siding with the trial court, reversing the appeals panel and protecting New York democracy from New York’s power-mad Democrats.
