This week:
-SCOTUS Decision Reignites N.Y. Mid-Decade Redistricting Effort
-McDonald Appointed to LATFOR
-NYC Campaign Finance Board on 2025 City Vote
-Working Families Party Candidate Remains on 113th AD Ballot
-Skoufis to Introduce Mail In Ballot Legislation
-Understanding N.Y.’s Residency Rules
-Attorney General’s Prelearance Activity
-Understanding the New Federal VRA Rules
-Around the Nation (From Redistricting Network)
REDISTRICTING
What’s Next For New York’s Mid-Decade Redistricting?
The state legislature is expected to approve one or more constitutional amendments to permit the legislature to draw a new congressional map before the 2028 elections. One pending amendment, introduced by Senator Mike Gianaris and Assemblyman Micah Lasher, would allow a new congressional map to be drawn mid-decade if any other state draws one first (as has already happened in Texas, California, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida). Other states are expected to enact new maps before this year’s elections or for the 2028 cycle. Depending on the outcome of the November elections and party control of Congress, the race to redistrict may go on through 2030.
With the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana nullifying the use of Section 2 Voting Rights Act challenges and last Friday’s Virginia Supreme Court decision preventing the use of a new Democratic-friendly map for 2026, national Democrats are ramping up efforts to counter GOP partisan gerrymanders wherever they can. Last week, U.S. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-Kings) sent a veteran Albany legislative leader, Congressman Joe Morelle (D-Monroe) to meet with Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins, Speaker Carl Heastie, Senator Mike Gianaris, and newly appointed Legislative Advisory on Reapportionment Task Force Co-Chair John McDonald, to discuss further Albany action to counter GOP redistricting efforts.
Any amendment approved by the legislature this year and again next year (unamended) will go to voters for approval in 2027 and if approved, signaling a green light for a new map in 2028. Any amendment campaign in 2027 will also draw national attention and heavy campaign spending pro and con by the parties. In 2021, voters rejected a Democratic-sponsored effort to enact an amendment that would have cleaned up a number of weaknesses and loopholes in the 2014 approved amendment that created the “Independent Redistricting Commission.” With that experience in mind, legislators may be cautious in attempting to go beyond permitting mid-decade redistricting and fixing several of the flaws in the current commission process.
It’s also important to remember that if a new map is drawn for 2028, the legislature must either waive several of the criteria in the 2014 amendment or draw a plan consistent with the criteria. Importantly, the current criteria prevents maps that “would result in the denial or abridgement of racial or language minority voting rights, and districts shall not be drawn to have the purpose of, nor shall they result in, the denial or abridgement of such rights.”
Following the Callais decision, states including Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas (and others) are eliminating congressional districts that they saw as required by Section 2.
The Callais decision only addressed Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act. The Callais decision did not address either state constitutional or statutory protections enacted to protect minority voting rights. These state laws remain in effort. At the local government level, New York’s John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act also seeks to ensure that all New Yorkers all New have equal access to the ballot.
In New York, a state court already invalidated the state’s 11th congressional district in Williams v. State Board of Elections as a violation of the state constitution’s protections against diluting minority voting strength (further action was stayed on that case by the U.S. Supreme Court and it was dropped by the plaintiffs). The message from the Williams case should help guide New York lawmakers from weakening any of New York’s effective minority districts, preventing them from being substantially changed in a map drawn for 2028.
In an interview with Politico NY, Senator Gianaris said that he didn’t “think we would want to roll back protection for minority communities in New York.” Further, in other states, congressional minority district being eliminated by non-minority GOP majority party legislators (several GOP legislators did vote against new maps in some states). New York’s districts were drawn by a Democratic majority state legislature where legislators were able to weigh-in creating the state’s current map.
McDonald Appointed To Legislature’s Redistricting Task Force
Assemblyman John T. McDonald III has been appointed by Speaker Carl Heastie to serve as co-chair of LATFOR, the state legislature’s Legislative Advisory Task Force on Demographic Research & Reapportionment. In this capacity, McDonald will cochair the task force with Senator Mike Gianaris. The task force was established by the legislature in 1978 to assist legislators with redistricting, census data, and demographic research.
ELECTIONS
N.Y.C. Campaign Finance Board Reviews 2025 City Vote
Investigative reporting by Spectrum NY1 reports that the Republican Party’s nominee for Governor Bruce Blakeman would most likely meet the threshold to receive state public financing for his campaign. The report shows that Blakeman has raised at least $504,954 in matchable donations of $250 or less from at least 6,777 state voters. Candidates are required to raise $500,000 in matchable donations of $250 or less from at least 5,000 New York State donors.
After reviewing the donations provided to NY1, Blakeman appears to have met both thresholds. According to NY1’s review, he has received at least $504,954 in matchable donations from at least 6,777 New Yorkers.
Working Families Party Candidate Remains on 113th Assembly District Ballot
Albany County Supreme Court Justice Thomas Marcelle has permitted candidate Thomas Kenny to remain on the ballot in his race for the 113th State Assembly district on the Working Families Party line. Kenny had been accused of trying to hijack the party’s line to run. He had been enrolled as a Conservative Party member and lived in a different district some time prior to establishing residency in the 113th district.
The judge found that Kennedy lived in the district for enough time prior to running to qualify to run. The district covers Glens Falls and parts of Washington and Saratoga counties. In his ruling, Justice Marcelle found that Kenny erred and relied on old Department of Motor Vehicle information that used an old address outside the district.
New York State Bill: Skoufis Mail-In Ballots Legislation
State Senator James Skoufis plans to introduce legislation instructing boards of elections to accept and count absentee and early mail-in ballots cast in state, county, city, town, and village elections up to seven days after the close of polls, so long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
Current state law allows boards of elections to count mail-in ballots that are received up to a week after election day, so long as they were sent on or before Election Day.
This new legislation comes after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in March on Watson v. Republican National Committee that could supersede state laws across the country, including New York’s, and require boards of elections to not count ballots cast on or before Election Day if they are received later due to postal service delays or other reasons out of the control of the voter.
This would only apply to the handling of federal elections; however, lawmakers can move to protect votes cast in state and local races, as Senator Skoufis’ legislation sets out to do.
NEW YORK ELECTION LAW
Understanding Candidate Residency Challenges in New York State: What Smart Candidates, Party Leaders, and Political Operatives Need to Know
By Joseph Burns, a partner in Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak’s New York office. Also see https://www.holtzmanvogel.com/news-insights
An Albany County Supreme Court Justice recently rejected a challenge to a Congressional candidate’s designating petitions based on the argument that the candidate did not in fact reside at the residence set forth on his designating petition. While the argument articulated by the Petitioners failed, a number of valuable lessons for future candidates, political operatives, and party leaders can be drawn from the court decision.
What Happened
The residential address listed on the candidate’s designating petition was an address at which the candidate recently registered to vote. The candidate’s spouse, son, and mother, however, maintained their residence at a different address in another part of New York State. The address listed by the candidate on his designating petition was owned by a close family friend, and the candidate paid no rent and contributed nothing toward household expenses.
While this likely appeared to be a straightforward example of a fraudulent residence to the Petitioners, the facts showed something very different.
Why the Court Ruled the Way It Did
Under New York Election Law, an individual can have multiple residences and register to vote from a second residence as long as he or she has a “legitimate, significant and continuing attachment” to it. The burden falls on the challenger to disprove that attachment by “clear and convincing evidence” — a high bar that Petitioners in this matter could not clear.
The Court identified a number of facts that, taken together, established the candidate’s eligibility to register to vote at the second residence: he had been staying there for a number of months; he left personal belongings in the home; he brought his family to stay; he visited a local house of worship of his faith; and — critically — he expressed a consistent, corroborated intention to permanently relocate to that region of New York State.
The absence of rent payments or a lease agreement, which might look fatal to a residency claim, was neutralized by compelling testimony about the particular religious and cultural practices of the candidate and the owner of the home. Both the candidate and the owner of the home explained that in their faith, accepting payment for housing a coreligionist would be considered offensive and contrary to the obligations of their faith. The Court credited that testimony entirely.
Equally important, the Court found no evidence that the candidate chose the address at issue to deceive or defraud anyone. Under the qualifications set forth in the U.S. Constitution, candidates and elected Members of Congress need only reside in the state from which they are elected. The candidate’s residency in New York State was never questioned. Furthermore, the Petitioners presented no proof of a single petition signer being confused or misled by the address on the candidate’s designating petition.
What The Decision Actually Means
First, fraud in this context requires intent — real, demonstrable intent to deceive. Courts are not going to infer fraudulent purpose simply because a candidate’s living arrangements are unconventional, nontraditional, or their ties to a particular address are recent. That is a critical distinction that challengers and their attorneys may miss.
Second, cultural and religious context may be meaningful. What looks like a sham arrangement to one observer may have a perfectly legitimate explanation rooted in faith, culture, and tradition. If you are going to call into question a candidate’s residency, you need to understand the full picture.
Third, corroboration matters. The candidate’s residency claim survived because multiple witnesses all told a consistent story about his intentions and his presence. On the other hand, a residency claim built on a candidate’s testimony alone may be far more precarious.
Practical Advice for New York Politicos
Candidates should document their connection to their residence and their district early and continuously. Voter registration, mail, religious and civic participation, and expressed intentions all matter — and they need to be authentic, not assembled after the fact.
Attorneys who represent candidates for public office should understand the full picture before filing a challenge to an opponent’s residency. A candidate who sleeps in a guest bedroom two nights a week can survive a ballot challenge if the surrounding facts support legitimate attachment. Do not assume that unconventional or nontraditional living arrangements indicate fraud.
Party chairs and other party leaders ought to vet their candidates’ residency before the period for circulating designating petitions begins. The time to discover a problematic residential history is not after your candidate’s petitions have been challenged in court.
Those involved in a challenge to a candidate’s residency should have a clear understanding of the complexities associated with these types of challenges. Even candidates who survive these challenges may find that their candidacies have suffered a significant political setback. Savvy candidates understand that never having your residency challenged is smarter politics than defending and surviving a challenge to your residency.
N.Y. VOTING RIGHTS ACT PRECLEARANCE
N.Y. Attorney General’s Office Preclearance
1341 Orange County Board of Elections- poll site location change in Wallkill-under review
1421 Orange County Board of Elections- poll site location changes in Woodbury- under review
1301 Westchester County Board of Elections- poll site locations- under review
1241 Erie County Board of Elections- poll site locations- granted
All submissions can be viewed at: https://nyvra-portal.ag.ny.gov/
FEDERAL VOTING RIGHT ACT
Supreme Court Rewrites the Rules for Minority Voting Rights in Louisiana v. Callais
On April 29, the Supreme Court issued a landmark 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais that dramatically narrows how courts evaluate claims of racial vote dilution under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The decision, written by Justice Alito, involves Louisiana’s congressional map known as “SB8,” which was drawn to include a second majority-Black district after a lower court found the state’s earlier map likely violated the VRA. When Louisiana complied by drawing SB8, a separate group of plaintiffs challenged it as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Supreme Court agreed, and in doing so, it reshaped the legal landscape for minority voting rights.
Note: page numbers in parentheses refer to the majority opinion)
How We Got Here
After the 2020 census, Louisiana redrew its six congressional districts. A federal court in Robinson v. Ardoin found that the resulting map likely violated Section 2 of the VRA because it included only one majority-Black congressional district, despite Black voters making up about a third of Louisiana’s population (p. 12). Louisiana eventually responded by passing SB8, which added a second majority-Black district, District 6, that stretched roughly 250 miles from Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in the southeast, connecting pockets of Black population along the way (p. 16). Almost immediately, another set of plaintiffs sued, arguing that this race-conscious map violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. A three-judge federal panel agreed that SB8 was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and the Supreme Court took up the appeal (p. 16–17).
The Core Legal Question
The Court’s majority used this case to resolve a question that had gone unanswered for over 30 years: can compliance with the VRA justify a state’s deliberate use of race when drawing district lines? The answer, the majority said, is “yes”, but only under a much stricter and newly reinterpreted version of the VRA (p. 17–18).
To understand what the majority changed, it helps to know what Section 2 actually says. The law prohibits any voting “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race.” It further defines a violation as occurring when the political process is “not equally open to participation” by minority voters – meaning they have “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice” (p. 19). Congress chose this “results” language deliberately in 1982, after the Supreme Court had previously required proof of discriminatory “intent” in Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980) – a standard widely seen as nearly impossible to meet. The word “results” was Congress’s explicit signal that a plaintiff could win by showing a map’s effects on minority voting power, without having to prove the mapmakers acted with racial malice.
The majority, however, held that Section 2 must be read in light of the Fifteenth Amendment, which the Court has long interpreted to prohibit only intentional racial discrimination by the government. Because Congress can only enforce constitutional rights, not expand them, the majority concluded that Section 2 imposes liability only when circumstances give rise to a “strong inference” of intentional discrimination (p. 23). Under the updated framework, plaintiffs must disentangle race from politics and other race-neutral factors in order to prevail, and a state that can point to partisan or traditional districting goals as the reason for its map will be in a stronger position to defeat a Section 2 claim (p. 25). Because Louisiana’s earlier map did not violate this stricter reading of Section 2, the state had no valid legal reason to draw SB8 along racial lines, and the new map therefore failed constitutional review (pp. 32–35).
Justice Kagan, in her dissent, noted that in practice, this means that a state can largely defeat a Section 2 claim by pointing to race-neutral or partisan reasons for its map, even if the map’s real-world effect is to minimize minority voters’ electoral influence.
The court majority was careful to say that absolute proof of intentional discrimination was not required under Section 2, instead, “a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred” was the new standard. The opinion also proffered an example of what would be a Section 2 violation in today’s environment:
“Suppose, for example, that the application of a State’s districting algorithm yields numerous maps with districts in which the members of a minority group constitute a majority, and suppose that the State cannot provide a legitimate reason for rejecting all those maps and eliminating all majority-minority districts. In such a situation, the inference of racial motivation is strong, and §2 of the Fifteenth Amendment permits the imposition of liability without demanding that the courts engage in the fraught enterprise of attempting to determine whether the state legislature as an institution, as opposed to certain individual members or the State’s hired mapmaker, was motivated by race.”
What Is the Gingles Framework and What Changed?
For the past 40 years, courts have used a test from Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) to evaluate Section 2 vote-dilution claims, that is, claims that a districting map minimizes minority voters’ ability to elect representatives of their choice. The Gingles test required plaintiffs to meet three threshold conditions (“preconditions”) plus a broader “totality of circumstances” inquiry. The majority in Callais retained the Gingles framework but significantly tightened each of its components (p. 26). The most consequential changes are shown in the comparison below.
What This Means in Practice
Under the old framework, Louisiana’s failure to include a second majority-Black district would have been evaluated primarily by whether Black voters could form a reasonably drawn majority in a new district, and whether racially polarized voting prevented them from electing their preferred candidates. Under the new framework, the Court found that the plaintiffs in the underlying Robinson lawsuit failed at every step: their proposed illustrative maps did not protect the incumbents that Louisiana wanted to protect, their racial polarization evidence did not separate race from partisanship, and their historical evidence of discrimination was insufficient to show a risk of present-day intentional racial discrimination (pp. 33–35). Because the VRA did not actually require a second majority-Black district under this new reading, Louisiana had no compelling justification for race-conscious mapmaking, and SB8 was struck down.
The practical consequences of this ruling are significant. States can now assert partisan goals as a near-complete defense to Section 2 vote-dilution claims, since plaintiffs must draw alternative maps that satisfy the state’s political objectives just as well as the state’s own map, a bar that may be impossible to clear when racial identity and party affiliation are closely linked. Three justices dissented in an opinion authored by Justice Kagan, arguing that the majority had effectively returned Section 2 to the intent-based standard Congress explicitly rejected when it amended the law in 1982. Redistricting experts and civil rights advocates are likely to closely watch how lower courts apply the new Callais requirements in the coming election cycles.
AROUND THE NATION
From The Redistrict Network (@RedistrictNet)
May 4: Alabama asks Supreme Court to fast-track redistricting cases after Callais decision — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 4: Governor DeSantis has signed Florida’s new congressional map into law. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 4: Plaintiffs file lawsuits challenging Florida’s new congressional redistricting plan. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 4: Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries launches the New York Democracy Project to advocate for and begin the legal process of redrawing New York’s congressional map. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 5: A majority of Trump-backed primary challengers beat Indiana GOP state senators who opposed redrawing the state’s congressional map last year. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 7: In light of Callais, the 5th Circuit has vacated their Aug. 14, 2025 judgment affirming a district court ruling that Louisiana’s state House and Senate maps violated Section 2.
The 5th Circuit has remanded the case back to the district court. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 7: Gov. Bill Lee has signed Tennessee’s new congressional map. The redistricting plan is now law. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 7: The South Carolina Senate will return on Tuesday for a vote on extending the legislative session.
Meanwhile, the South Carolina House Judiciary Committee plans to proceed with tomorrow’s hearing focused on reviewing proposed congressional redistricting maps. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 8: The Virginia Supreme Court has nullified the Virginia Redistricting Referendum. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 8: Alabama has passed legislation that would allow the state to revert to the legislature’s 2023 congressional map if the injunction is lifted before the May 19 primary deadline
A similar bill impacting the AL Senate map has also passed the legislature — @RedistrictNet [from X]
May 8: Democrats have asked for a stay in the Virginia Redistricting Case as they file an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. — @RedistrictNet [from X]
INSTITUTE RESOURCES
The New York Elections, Census and Redistricting Institute has archived many resources for the public to view on our Digital Commons Page.
Our Redistricting Resources page contains resources on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. You can access the page here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_resources/
Archived Updates can be accessed here: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/redistricting_roundtable_updates/
Please share this weekly update with your colleagues. To be added to the mailing list, please contact [email protected]
The N.Y. Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute is supported by grants from the New York Community Trust, New York Census Equity Fund, the Mellon Foundation, and the New York City Council. This report was prepared by Jeff Wice, Esha Shah, Michelle David of Redistricting Online & Jason Fierman of @RedistrictNet.