Will the Supreme Court’s Texas ruling affect New York redistricting?

This week, the legislative task force in charge of redistricting is expected to release its proposed electoral maps for New York State. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has long promised to veto plans drawn by the legislature rather than an independent commission, especially any proposal that he considers partisan. A veto would throw the decision-making process to the courts. But last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a significant new ruling on redistricting that threatens to undermine Cuomo’s pledge. The Justices unanimously rejected electoral maps drawn by a federal court for Texas, finding that the court had overstepped its authority and didn’t offer enough deference to the legislature’s role in redistricting.

Our question is: What does the Supreme Court ruling mean for the future of New York’s redistricting process?

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What we found

For now, the Texas ruling does not affect redistricting in New York. That’s because the Supreme Court’s decision applies to a very particular scenario: cases where maps are passed by the legislature and governor, and then challenged on grounds of being racially discriminatory and failing to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court found that in these situations, courts should only correct what is illegal in a plan by the legislature and not draw their own maps from scratch in its place. But New York’s legislature is about to submit its plans for the first time, and the ruling does not change the guidelines for what it can do.

Nor does the ruling affect two of the key political debates surrounding New York’s redistricting: the possibility of an independent redistricting commission, and Gov. Cuomo’s threat to veto plans that are drawn by the legislature. Since an independent commission would be created by the legislature with either a new law or an amendment to New York’s Constitution, it would not violate the balance of power concerns raised in the Supreme Court’s decision. And in the case of a veto by Gov. Cuomo, courts would still have wide latitude to start from scratch in drawing new maps, said an attorney familiar with New York’s redistricting process.

Costas Panagopolous, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy at Fordham University, said the Supreme Court’s ruling did not mean that the legislature’s power to draw new lines superseded the veto that the governor has promised. “That’s a commitment that the governor has made,” said Panagopolous. “And if he’s not going to stick to it he’s going to have to justify it in a different way.”