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New York appellate court tosses Assembly maps

Assembly Maps WEB

VESTAL, NY (WSKG) — An appellate judge ruled Friday that legislative maps for New York’s Assembly districts were approved unconstitutionally by the state Legislature.

The court’s ruling keeps the existing Assembly district lines in place for 2022 elections, but orders a lower court in New York County to redraw the maps. 

Earlier this year, the New York State Court of Appeals noted in a ruling that it believed the Assembly maps weren’t approved constitutionally. This was mentioned in a footnote of a case that only addressed New York’s congressional and state Senate maps. As a result, the state’s highest court left the Assembly maps in place.

“The people of New York voted to have non-partisan lines drawn so that politicians could not gerrymander their districts to maintain their own power,” Aaron Foldenauer, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in the case wrote in a press release Friday afternoon.

The state Legislature drafted its own maps for state Assembly, state Senate and congressional districts earlier this year after a commission charged with drawing the maps deadlocked and didn’t complete its work as charged in the state Constitution.

Vaughn Golden has been reporting across New York since 2016. Working as a freelancer while studying journalism and economics at Ithaca College, Vaughn has reported for a number of outlets including the Albany Times Union, New York Post, and NPR among others. Prior to coming to WSKG full-time, Vaughn was a reporter for the Watertown Daily Times. Vaughn now covers government and politics for WSKG.