The path to a new gerrymandered map may be more difficult than state Democrats would hope.
The path to a new gerrymandered map may be more difficult than state Democrats would hope.
W ithin hours of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision, leading New York State Democrats were voicing their intense opposition to the case’s outcome. On X, New York’s top Democrat, Governor Kathy Hochul, vowed to “fight back.” Leading Democrats from New York’s Assembly and Senate majorities joined the governor in her opposition to the decision that strongly curtailed the ability to use race in drawing legislative districts at all levels of government. More recently, New York representative and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries tasked close ally and Rochester-area Democratic Representative Joe Morelle to coordinate with state leaders on a plan for another round of redistricting before the 2028 elections.
And just like that, the first shots of New York’s 2028 redistricting wars had been fired. It may be a challenging fight: New York is undoubtedly one of the country’s bluest states, and Democrats dominate state government, but ramming through a new, gerrymandered Democratic map might not be as easy as many assume.
With less than a month to go before the close of New York’s 2026 state legislative session, the Albany Democrats’ strategy appears focused on passing an amendment that would weaken the state constitution’s anti-gerrymandering safeguards. Any suggestion, however, that this proposal is a response to the Callais decision or an effort to protect minority voting rights is laughable. The amendment, which is sponsored by Deputy Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris and assemblyman and congressional candidate Micah Lasher, was originally proposed in 2025 as a way to enable a mid-decade redistricting.
But if history is any guide, the adoption of this amendment by Empire State voters is far from a guarantee. Albany Democrats tried to weaken the state constitution’s anti-gerrymandering provisions in 2021. That amendment easily passed both houses of the Democratic-dominated state legislature. When it went to the voters for final approval at the 2021 general election, however, the amendment was defeated, along with two other voting-related constitutional amendments, shocking New York’s Democratic establishment.
If approved by the state legislature in 2026 and 2027, the Gianaris–Lasher proposal could go to the voters of New York at the 2027 general election. But even if the amendment was approved in 2027, significant obstacles would still stand in the way of a highly partisan gerrymander by the state’s overwhelmingly Democratic legislature.
For starters, while the proposed amendment would allow for another round of redistricting, it would not repeal the New York constitution’s prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. This ban was added to the state constitution as part of a bipartisan redistricting reform amendment approved by New York voters in 2014. Voters okayed that amendment by a hefty margin of 58 percent to 42 percent, and it was favored by voters in the vast majority of New York’s 62 counties, including the five counties that comprise the city of New York.
The constitutional anti-gerrymandering provision prevented an egregious gerrymander by Albany Democrats at the outset of this redistricting cycle in 2022. Republicans in 2022 challenged the map approved by the Democratic state legislature in state court, arguing it was an unconstitutional gerrymander under the state constitution. Much to the surprise of Albany insiders, the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, agreed, and allowed a trial court judge to draw a new congressional district map.
Beyond the constitutional restrictions that would remain in place even if the Gianaris–Lasher amendment were adopted, practical political considerations may also stop Albany Democrats from creating an extreme gerrymander.
After the appointment of a new chief judge and associate judge, Democrats won a lawsuit at the Court of Appeals that allowed the state legislature to conduct another redistricting before the 2024 election. But Democrats in the state legislature played it safe and made few major changes to the state’s congressional district map. While Democrats defeated three incumbent Republican House members in the 2024 general election, they won two of those races by only a whisker, indicating that changes made in the 2024 redistricting played only a minimal role in the outcome of that year’s races.
Even the move by Democrats to trigger a new round of redistricting earlier this year was far more modest than their previous attempts to gerrymander. In this latest effort, Democrats argued that the state’s only New York City–based Republican-held House seat violated the state’s legal and constitutional minority voting rights protections. While the state courts agreed with the Democratic plaintiffs, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately blocked this latest gerrymandering gambit. But again, this most recent Democratic effort targeted just the single GOP-held New York City seat, underscoring how limited the practical opportunities for an aggressive gerrymander may actually be.
Albany Democrats’ post-Callais moves toward redistricting are clearly more about raw political considerations than they are about voting rights. New York’s Democrats, after all, have been looking to tinker with the state’s House districts from the moment they were drawn by the judge in 2022. The Callais decision gives them a convenient excuse to try to do it once more. Future gains, however, might be far less than New York’s Democratic voting base might expect. Constitutional and practical roadblocks would remain in the way of an extreme gerrymander.
New York’s 2026 legislative session ends early next month, and 2028 redistricting is only one of many legislative items on the agendas of the assembly speaker, Senate majority leader, and governor. Given that future control of the House of Representatives is at stake, it’s a guarantee that politicos across the country will be keeping a close eye on what’s going on in Albany.