The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with Republicans and halted a New York judge’s order to redraw the boundaries of the only GOP-held congressional district in New York City for the 2026 elections, despite the lower-court finding that the map unfairly diluted Black and Hispanic residents’ voting power.
The ruling preserves the district represented by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis. The district includes Staten Island and a small piece of Brooklyn, and the Supreme Court’s action stopped the state process from producing changes ahead of the next election cycle.
The dispute began when a judge ruled the district was drawn in a way that diluted the power of Black and Hispanic voters and ordered New York’s Independent Redistricting Commission to complete a new map. The judge issued the decision under New York’s constitution, and the Supreme Court did not provide an explanation for why it stepped in in that emergency posture, according to the reporting.
In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor objected to the Supreme Court’s decision to intervene before the state’s highest court could act. Sotomayor wrote that federal courts should not meddle with state election laws ahead of an election and warned that the court took what she called an unprecedented step by staying the state trial court’s ruling without giving the state’s top court a chance to address the matter.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the conservative majority, argued that the lower-court ruling—grounded in New York’s constitutional framework—amounted to unconstitutional conduct. Alito wrote that the ruling amounted to “unadorned racial discrimination” in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Malliotakis praised the Supreme Court’s action, saying the pause stopped what she characterized as efforts to manipulate the state courts by using race to influence the outcome of elections. In a statement, she also thanked the justices for stopping, in her words, voters in Staten Island and southern Brooklyn from being “stripped” of what she said was their ability to elect a representative reflecting their values.
New York Republicans and the Trump administration had sought the Supreme Court’s intervention. Reporting said qualifying for congressional elections in New York began last week, underscoring the timing pressure that helped shape the case’s high court posture.
The underlying argument before the judge included a proposed reshaping of the district. A law firm affiliated with Democrats argued that the Staten Island seat should be redrawn by removing the district’s small Brooklyn portion and replacing it with a chunk of Lower Manhattan, an approach that would have replaced some Republican-leaning areas with communities where President Donald Trump lost to former Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 50 points in 2024, according to the reporting.
The judge, while finding that change was required to give more voting power to the growing Black and Hispanic population on Staten Island, left the details of how to redraw the congressional maps to New York’s bipartisan redistricting commission, which had not yet produced proposals at the time.
After the Supreme Court’s order, New York State Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox praised the decision and criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul and other Democratic leaders for allowing the case to move forward, as the fight over congressional district boundaries continues to play out across states.