Lawsuit Seeks to Overturn New York Assembly District Maps

NEW YORK
N.Y. Assembly chamber. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)

A Democratic community activist and former Senate hopeful is suing to overturn the state Assembly maps drawn by legislators from his own party, alleging that officials engaged in gerrymandering, the Daily News reports.

Gary Greenberg’s lawsuit comes on the heels of last week’s decision made by the New York State Court of Appeals, which threw out proposed congressional and state Senate district maps, after Republicans accused the Democrats who drew up the maps of rigging the maps to get the most votes. The maps are routinely redrawn every ten years in accordance with the population census.

That decision did not address the State Assembly maps, however, as these were never challenged by the Republicans in their lawsuit – even though the evidence suggested that Democrats had engaged in exactly the same unlawful conduct in that regard as well. The judges strongly implied that had the Republicans included them in their lawsuit, they would have ruled in their favor.

Greenberg will follow up on the previous lawsuit and challenge the Assembly district maps as well. “They threw out the state Senate, they threw out the congressional and they did footnote that the only reason they didn’t throw out the Assembly was because no one asked them,” Greenberg told the Daily News on Friday. “I don’t want to vote in an unconstitutional district that was improperly drawn.”

“The Assembly maps were drawn in the same process,” Greenberg told Spectrum news. “They didn’t follow the directions under what voters wanted and voted to change in the New York constitution. [Senate Deputy Majority Leader] Mike Gianaris and the district assemblyman who edited the maps used the same staff to draw the congressional, Senate and Assembly districts. They drew these maps up wrong,” he continued. “They thought since it was Democratic judges, they thought it was a shoe-in, that the appeals process would go their way. Well, it backfired.”

Greenberg is filing in the same Southern Tier court that the first lawsuit was made in, because the judge is already familiar with the case, he said.

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