SCOTUS sides with Malliotakis on redistricting case, in blow to NY Dems

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis may be cruising to reelection after all, after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered New York Monday to pause all efforts to redraw the Republican-held 11th Congressional District ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“The case isn’t over yet legally, but for the purposes of the 2026 elections, the map the Legislature enacted in 2024 remains in place and Nicole Malliotakis will run for reelection in the district that now includes Staten Island and Brooklyn,” said Jeffrey Wice, a redistricting expert and professor at New York Law School.

In the midst of national, politicized mid-cycle redistricting efforts driven by the Trump administration, New York Democrats had earned a small-scale legal win when a state court ordered in January that Malliotakis’ district should be redrawn to increase the voting power of Black and Latino residents. A mid-level appeals court unanimously affirmed the ruling last month. 

But Malliotakis appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the justices sided with her in a 6-3 opinion to block the state’s redistricting commission from redrawing the district. The court has requested responses from both sides and will continue to consider the emergency request, but the order indicates SCOTUS would likely squash any future state court decisions triggering a redraw – effectively blocking attempts to alter the district ahead of this year’s election.

“These cases concern a state-court order that blatantly discriminates on the basis of race,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a blistering concurring opinion, arguing that the New York Supreme Court’s order to the Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw the district to benefit “minority voters” “is unadorned racial discrimination, an inherently ‘odious’ activity that violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause except in the “most extraordinary case.”

Alito also wrote that the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prohibits the state court from “authoriz(ing) a violation of federal rights.” Based on this, Alito wrote that Malliotakis would likely prevail in the end.

The federal justices also found the time frame set by New York’s highest court to hear the merits of the appeal would not allow for ample time for Supreme Court review of the case to fit the election calendar, thus requiring the stay to be issued.

Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat representing a neighboring district including lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, was hoping to challenge Malliotakis in November. Instead, he seems all but guaranteed to face former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander in a Democratic primary instead. Lander lamented to City & State last month that his hands were tied in his race against Goldman while they waited for resolution of the redistricting case. Goldman and Malliotakis’ campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a scathing dissent from the 6-3 opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority was enacting “rules for thee, but not for me.” Sotomayor cited the court’s recent history of ruling that the federal courts should not interfere in state-level election law and redistricting rulings and now was taking a side in the Malliotakis case. Sotomayor was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the dissent. 

“Today, the Court takes the astonishing, unexplained step of staying a state trial court’s order before the state high court has had a chance to weigh in,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. “To do so, the majority had to conclude that it has jurisdiction to act, that acting now is consistent with the bedrock federalism values underlying its jurisdictional limits, and that the equities favor granting this relief despite the Court’s repeated admonitions to proceed cautiously when intervening in state elections or court proceedings. The Court goes badly wrong at every turn.”

Sotomayor also wrote that the Supreme Court should have waited until the state Court of Appeals has ruled in the case, since the Supreme Court cannot predict how the state’s highest court would rule. 

New York Republican Party Chair Ed Cox was happy with Monday’s ruling that made it all the more likely Malliotakis would hold her seat. He blasted Gov. Kathy Hochul, state Attorney General Letitia James and legislative leaders for the redistricting plan they enacted in 2024 after the state’s highest court struck down the initial map for partisan gerrymandering. 

“The case was a disgrace,” Cox said in a statement. “Instead of defending the law they enacted, Hochul, James and the legislative leaders supinely allowed this case to move forward using as their instrument a partisan and conflicted acting Supreme Court justice. New Yorkers should know that Kathy Hochul always puts her political interests first and the interests of the citizens of our state last. This case was just another manifestation of her disgraceful and incompetent governance."