Justice Samuel Alito said the order from the New York Supreme Court “is unadorned racial discrimination.”
The Supreme Court has paused an order from New York that would have required the state to redraw its Congressional map. The request for the review came from GOP Rep Nichole Malliotakis, who represents the District 11, the district in question, along with state officials, and potentially disenfranchised New York voters.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the order from the New York Supreme Court for the New York Independent Redistricting Commission “draw a new congressional district for the express purpose of ensuring that ‘minority voters’ are able to elect the candidate of their choice” discriminates “on the basis of race.” The district at issue is the 11th District, which covers the area of Staten Island and part of the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. It is the only GOP-led district in New York City.
He said the order “is unadorned racial discrimination” and an “odious” activity that violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. He wrote that the order does not meet the extraordinary circumstances laid out by the law.
He said that the Supreme Court stepped in because “there is an unacceptably strong possibility that the applicants’ appeal in the state court system will not conclude until it is too late for us to review the ultimate decision by means of a writ of certiorari, even if it appears that the decision is based on a seriously mistaken understanding of the Constitution.”
He took aim at Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, writing that it “demands that we wait until the completion of a series of events that would likely run out the clock before we could review the order. That would provide a way of achieving what full review would not permit: the use of an unconstitutional district in the November election and the election of a Member of the House of Representatives whose entitlement to the office would be tainted. That is a prospect this Court should not countenance.”
Per SCOTUSblog, the ruling has cleared the way for the state to go forward in the 2026 elections using the state’s existing congressional map.
