Judge tosses lines of NYC’s only Republican House seat, as state enters redistricting wars

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday threw out the boundaries of the only congressional seat in New York City represented by a Republican, ordering the state to redraw the district ahead of the midterm elections.

Republicans are expected to appeal the decision, as a new front opens in a national gerrymandering battle that has both political parties jockeying for advantage in the fight over control of the U.S. House.

About a third of states have considered redrawing their House districts since President Donald Trump began pushing for Republicans to craft new congressional lines to help his party hold onto its narrow House majority in this year’s midterms. Democrats have countered by launching their own redistricting efforts, though they have sometimes been hampered by laws they passed intended to prevent partisan gerrymandering.

In New York, Judge Jeffrey Pearlman handed Democrats an early win in the fight, ruling that a district held by Republican U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis in southern Brooklyn and Staten Island should be reconfigured.

The case, filed by an election law firm aligned with the Democratic Party, argued the current lines of the district were drawn without accounting for a rise in Staten Island’s Black and Latino residents, thereby diluting their voting power.

Republicans had bashed the lawsuit as a clear effort to game the district to help Democrats and eliminate one of the few remaining GOP districts in the state.

In a statement, Malliotakis said, “This is a frivolous attempt by Washington Democrats to steal this congressional seat from the people and we are very confident that we will prevail at the end of the day.”