State assembly map tossed out by appellate court

New York’s redistricting roller-coaster ride continues.

A State Appellate Division panel in New York County on Friday invalidated the assembly map signed into law by the governor in February.

But the appeals panel declined to postpone the June 28 party primary election to allow new assembly maps to be drawn for the 2022 election. Instead the appellate court ruled that the map adopted by the state in February will remain in place for 2022 and redrawn under court supervision and implemented for the 2024 election.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who sought to stop the June 28 primary election and postpone it to a date as late as September, immediately filed notice of appeal to the state’s highest court.

The assembly map adopted by the state makes a big change to the boundaries of the East End’s two assembly districts. The First Assembly District’s boundaries were changed to add the Town of Southold to the South Fork district, which already took in the towns of East Hampton, Southampton and Shelter Island, as well as a small portion of the Town of Brookhaven on the south shore.

The Second Assembly District now includes the Town of Riverhead, the north shore of Brookhaven, east of the Village of Port Jefferson, and a large swath of eastern Brookhaven.

A prior lawsuit brought in upstate Steuben County ended with an April 27 Court of Appeals ruling that mandated the redrawing of the state’s congressional and state senate district boundaries. The court held that the procedure used to adopt new congressional and state legislative maps was unconstitutional. However the ruling in that case, Harkenrider v. Hochul, did not invalidate the assembly map because it was not part of the Harkenrider lawsuit.

A lawsuit challenging the assembly map was filed May 15 in New York County. A trial court judge on May 25 denied the petition in its entirety, ruling, in essence that it was too late to invalidate the assembly map and postpone the June 28 primary to allow for a new map to be drawn.

“This Court does not have the ability to stop time and the unfortunate reality is that we have already passed that point of no return. To paraphrase the well known quote – Democracy is not a perfect system, but it is the best available, so too allowing the assembly map to stand is not a perfect solution but it remains the best available,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Laurence Love.

The Appellate Division ruled the petition “timely to the extent it seeks a declaration that the February 2022 assembly map is invalid due to procedural infirmities in the manner in which it was adopted.”

But the court also ruled that petitioners’ attempt to postpone the June 28 primary was barred by a doctrine called laches, which holds that a party may be prevented from raising a claim due to an unreasonable delay in pursuing the claim. There was “unreasonable and prejudicial delay in bringing this proceeding,” the appellate court ruled.

“The request for a delay of the 2022 assembly primary elections is denied in any event, because the redrawing and implementing of a new assembly map before a 2022 primary election delayed even until September is, at this late date, no longer feasible,” the appellate panel wrote.