In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority preserved Rep. Malliotakis’s Staten Island district and halted a state court’s redrawing order
The Court Steps In
The United States Supreme Court intervened in New York’s redistricting process on March 2, 2026, blocking a state court’s order that would have required the redrawing of the only congressional district in New York City currently held by a Republican. The unsigned, one-paragraph order from the court’s conservative majority effectively preserved the existing map of New York’s 11th Congressional District — covering Staten Island and a small section of Brooklyn — for the 2026 midterm elections, handing a significant legal and political victory to incumbent Rep. Nicole Malliotakis.
The Background
In October 2025, four New York City residents filed a lawsuit arguing that the 11th District’s boundaries diluted the voting power of Black and Latino residents in violation of the state constitution. In January 2026, a state court judge in Manhattan ruled for the plaintiffs and ordered the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to propose a new map by February 6. A state appellate court declined a request to pause the mapmaking process. Republicans, including Malliotakis and the Trump administration, then appealed to the Supreme Court.
What the Court Said
The Supreme Court’s majority did not explain its rationale, as is customary in emergency applications. But Justice Samuel Alito wrote separately to call the state court judge’s order “unadorned racial discrimination” in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, arguing that drawing maps to ensure minority voters elect the candidate of their choice amounts to unconstitutional racial sorting. The ruling split along ideological lines, with the court’s three Democratic appointees publicly dissenting.
The Dissent
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, accused the majority of an “unexplained about-face” from its stated norm of not interfering in state election laws ahead of elections. “Time and again, this Court has said that federal courts should not meddle with state election laws ahead of an election,” Sotomayor wrote. “Ignoring every limit on federal courts’ authority, the Court takes the unprecedented step of staying a state trial court’s decision in a redistricting dispute on matters of state law without giving the State’s highest court a chance to act.” She warned that the ruling would invite emergency appeals to the Supreme Court in every election law dispute nationwide.
The Political Stakes
Republicans currently hold a House majority by just four seats. Malliotakis won re-election in 2024 by a 28-point margin, and her district backed Trump by 24 points. A redrawn map that swapped Republican-leaning Brooklyn neighborhoods for parts of Lower Manhattan — where Trump lost to Kamala Harris by more than 50 points — could have fundamentally altered the race. SCOTUSblog noted the ruling was the third time this term the court had resolved an emergency redistricting appeal ahead of the 2026 midterms. The Brennan Center for Justice has argued that the surge of redistricting litigation at the Supreme Court level reflects the court’s own shifting approach to voting rights questions since the 2013 Shelby County decision gutted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Malliotakis praised the ruling. Sotomayor’s dissent suggested the implications extend far beyond Staten Island.
