The race for the 2026 House majority continues to heat up amidst a nationwide arms-race that has seen mid-decade gerrymandering reach heights not seen in nearly fifty years.
That debacle now finds itself in the Big Apple, where the Staten Island-based NY-11 has been ruled a racial gerrymander that has diluted the suffrage of black and Latino Staten Islanders. The ruling now permits the State to redraw the seat by next month.
The lawsuit was filed by the Washington, D.C.-based firm the Elias Law Group, which was founded in 2021 by Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. The firm describes itself as a “mission-driven firm committed to helping Democrats win, citizens vote, and progressives make change,” according to their website. A 2022 Politico report found that the group represented 950 clients, including more than 150 Democratic House and Senate campaigns and congressional incumbents.
Elias Law Group claims that Staten Island’s black and Latino populations have surged from 11% to around 30% in the last forty years, stating that the district’s boundaries “confine Staten Island’s growing black and Latino communities in a district where they are routinely and systematically unable to influence elections.”
NY-11 not only includes all of Staten Island but the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Bath Beach, Dyker Heights, and parts of Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay, and Bensonhurst. It is the most conservative urban district in the country and Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (R, NY-11), who has represented the district since 2021, is the only Republican representing New York City in Congress.
The district backed President Donald Trump (R-FL) in the 2024 election with 61% of the vote.
Last decade, the seat had retained much of its current makeup, being a district encompassing all of Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn. Despite its intrinsic Republican lean then, Max Rose (D) flipped it blue in a shocking upset in the 2018 midterms. Rose was ousted two years later by Malliotakis.
The pitched remedy aims to transfer the Brooklyn portions of the district to lower Manhattan, taking in almost everything south of West Village.
On Monday, Malliotakis officially appealed the decision and said that if no ruling is made by February 10, she will take her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling was made by Acting State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Pearlman, a Democrat who previously served as special counsel to Governor Kathy Hochul (D). Pearlman was appointed to the bench by Hochul but has resisted Republican calls to abstain from the process, stating that he had never advised Hochul or anyone else on the issues involved in the case.
Malliotakis also claims that she is being disenfranchised herself, pointing to her half-Cuban American and half-Greek American ancestry. In 2012, she was named “40 Under 40 Latino Rising Stars” by the Hispanic Coalition of New York.
Finally, the move serves as New York’s formal entry in the redistricting arms race. Governor Hochul had vowed retribution in August after Texas Republicans passed an aggressive gerrymander, but State law would likely hinder a gerrymander of equal proportions in New York until 2028.
