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Some legislators and groups called the new districts unconstitutional in submitted testimony. It’s unclear how their feedback will affect the final lines.

By Rebecca C. Lewis

When the court-appointed redistricting expert released his draft lines on Monday, he threw New York’s political world into chaos. Newly proposed districts for both Congress and the state Senate offered dramatic changes to the state’s political playing field, pitting a large number of incumbents against each other and drawing many other incumbents out of their current districts. Various politicians and advocacy groups also expressed dissatisfaction over the way lines were drawn, noting various ways that communities of interest would be split up.

Since the new lines were published, New Yorkers could submit testimony to the court about what they did and did not like about the proposed maps. Along with many average voters who wrote the judge and the redistricting expert, several high-profile people and groups weighed in as well, including state legislative Democrats, Common Cause New York and the Unity Map Coalition.

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Common Cause said the maps “eliminate multiple districts where black, Latinx and Asian-American voters previously constituted a majority or significant plurality (of voters).”

Echoing those sentiments, the Unity Map Coalition – a group made up of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College – wrote to the court that the redistricting expert created maps “without much, if any, regard to existing neighborhoods and communities of interest.” It went on to lay out a number of specific issues with both the state Senate and congressional maps in New York City.

The court is expected to approve the final maps on Friday. Whether the testimony it received since the release of the drafts will have any significant impact on what those lines will look like remains unknown