A lawsuit was filed over New York's newly approved district lines for Congress Thursday evening, pitting a handful of voters in court against top lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Those voters argued in the lawsuit that the state Legislature didn't go through the correct legal avenues in crafting the new lines, and drew them to the advantage of Democrats in this year's elections.
The new maps, which are redrawn every 10 years based on the results of the U.S. census, were supposed to be designed by a new commission created in the last decade by the state Legislature, through an amendment to the state constitution. That panel, called the Independent Redistricting Commission, failed to come to an agreement on a new set of maps.
The commission, because of the gridlock, sent two competing sets of maps to the Legislature for consideration. Because of that gridlock, the Legislature rejected both sets of maps.
When the Legislature voted against the maps, that triggered part of the constitutional amendment that required the panel to negotiate a second set of maps for the Legislature to consider. Instead, the gridlock continued, and the commission failed to produce a second set of maps for consideration.
The state Legislature then took over the process, and approved new maps for Congress, the State Senate, and the Assembly this week, drawn by a special, internal legislative task force.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed those maps into law Thursday evening, after which the new lawsuit was filed.
The lawsuit, which is targeted specifically at the new maps for Congress, argued that the new maps weren't valid because the commission hadn't produced a second set of maps for the Legislature to consider and, therefore, the Legislature skipped that step in approving its own maps.
There was a deadline, under law, for the commission to produce the second set, but the panel voluntarily called it quits the day before.
"The Constitution requires that the Legislature 'vote upon' the 'second redistricting plan and the necessary implementing legislation' before it may introduce its own plan, and yet the Legislature never complied with these rules," the lawsuit read.
The lawsuit also argued that the new maps drawn and approved through the Legislature violated part of the state constitution that outlawed the practice of carving lines to favor specific lawmakers or parties. In other words, that part of the constitution explicitly made gerrymandering illegal.
The new districts for Congress were drawn to benefit Democrats and knock Republicans out of key seats, the lawsuit argued.
The lawsuit was filed in Steuben County, in the State Supreme Court, the lowest of three judicial tiers in New York for this kind of legal action.
