More than 110 organizations, all dedicated to improving the lives of New Yorkers, recently signed a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul, urging her to nominate a new Chief Judge to the Court of Appeals who is not a former prosecutor and is committed to upholding family and privacy rights. A lawyer who has “demonstrated appreciation for the law’s power to protect the most vulnerable, and defend our democracy in the challenging years ahead.” The letter faults the Court of Appeals “conservative turn” in its Harkenrider v. Hochul decision and attacks the majority decision of the Court of Appeals in that case.

In the Harkenrider case the lower courts, made up of “conservative” as well as “progressive” jurists in different parts of the state, determined that the election district map which the Democratic state legislators sought to have imposed on the state, after the tardy 2020 census, was “unconstitutionally gerrymandered to create a political advantage for the Democratic Party.” The New York Court of Appeals, bound by that factual finding, applied it to provisions of a 2014 New York State Constitutional amendment which had strong bipartisan support and which prohibited the state legislature from passing an election redistricting map until certain processes had been followed. The 2014 New York state constitutional amendment not only prohibited the partisan gerrymandering of election maps by geographic contortion, it also established a nonpartisan Independent Redistricting Commission charged with the responsibility of approving election redistricting maps prior to the legislative approval of those maps. After the New York State Redistricting Commission was unable to agree on a single map, despite being given ample time and two opportunities to act, the Democratic majority of the State Assembly, without input from Republican legislators or the Redistricting Commission, created its own concededly gerrymandered election district map which the New York Court of Appeals rejected.

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