New York’s top court struck down the state’s new Congressional and state Senate district maps, on the grounds that they illegally gerrymandered for partisan purposes, throwing this year’s legislative races in Brooklyn into disarray.
In a 4-3 decision, the state Court of Appeals ruled that the maps drawn by Albany Democrats, who took the mantle after an independent commission failed to reach consensus, were drawn with an “impermissible” partisan bias and designed to discourage electoral competition, and ordered a nonpartisan court appointee, known as a “special master,” to draw new maps.
