New York Communities for Change v. Nassau County
What's at Stake
This case in New York state court centers on the landmark John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York (NYVRA) and the New York Municipal Home Rule Law (MHRL). The NYVRA, like several other state voting rights acts enacted in recent years, expands upon the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial vote dilution. The MHRL prohibits racial discrimination and partisan gerrymandering in local-level redistricting. The ACLU’s Voting Rights Project and State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the New York Civil Liberties Union, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Steptoe LLP filed a lawsuit on behalf of voters of color in Nassau County, New York alleging that a redistricting plan implemented in 2023 for Nassau County’s legislative districts dilutes the voting strength of Black, Latino, and Asian residents and is gerrymandered for partisan advantage in violation of the NYVRA and the MHRL.
Summary
This case concerns recently enacted state laws in New York that protect voters and prohibit discriminatory redistricting: the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York (NYVRA), which expands upon the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial vote dilution, and Section 34 of the New York Municipal Home Rule Law (MHRL), which prescribes a range of criteria for county-level redistricting, including prohibitions on racial discrimination and partisan gerrymandering. In 2023, Nassau County put in place a redistricting map for the County’s legislative districts that dilutes the electoral power of Black, Latino, and Asian voters and advantages the Republican party. On behalf of voters of color in Nassau County, the ACLU, NYVRA, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, AALDEF, and Steptoe LLP sued under the NYVRA and MHRL to enjoin use of this discriminatory map and replace it with one that respects the voting rights of the County’s communities of color and does not favor any political party.
Nassau County is a racially diverse county where Black, Latino, and Asian residents make up almost one-half of the total population and more than one-third of the population of eligible voters. Yet the 2023 Map contains only four legislative districts out of nineteen in which voters of color constitute a majority of eligible voters. The Map achieves this vote dilution by “packing” voters of color in high concentrations in certain districts while “cracking” them—or splitting them up—among other districts to reduce their ability to elect their preferred candidates. The evidence indicates that a non-dilutive map would have provided six districts in which Black, Latino, and Asian voters constituted a majority of eligible voters. It would also have kept whole a large, compact Asian community in western Nassau County instead of cracking it across three separate districts like the 2023 Map does. During the redistricting process, numerous residents testified to the Nassau County Legislature that in districts where voters of color are not able to elect their preferred candidates, the elected legislators are not responsive to their needs.
The evidence also shows that the 2023 Map is configured to give the Republican party an advantage in securing majority control of the Legislature. What is more, the Map was developed in a one-sided, partisan process that excluded meaningful input from Democratic legislators and the public, whose repeated pleas to see information and analyses about whether the Map was fair were rejected.
The defendants moved for summary judgment in October 2024, arguing, among other things, that the NYVRA is facially unconstitutional because it assigns benefits and burdens based on individual racial classifications. On December 6, 2024, the trial court denied the defendants’ summary-judgment motion, holding that the NYVRA is not unconstitutional on its face. The court reasoned that the NYVRA “seeks to protect all voters from racial discrimination in voting” by “provid[ing] equal opportunity in voting,” not by requiring any “race-based preference.” The court also affirmed that “[t]here is no rule that a state legislature can never extend civil rights beyond what Congress has provided.”
Trial is scheduled to take place from December 2024 to January 2025.