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Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican from New York, speaks to members of the media outside the Capitol on Friday, June 27, 2025.
Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images
New York’s congressional map is facing another legal challenge.
On Monday, a group of Staten Island voters filed a lawsuit alleging that the 11th Congressional District, which contains the entire borough and parts of Brooklyn, dilutes the voting power of Black and Latino voters in violation of the state constitution.
The filing alleges that the district in its current form doesn’t meaningfully account for the decadeslong growth of Staten Island’s Black and Latino populations and the decline of the borough’s white population.
“CD-11’s antiquated boundaries instead confine Staten Island’s growing Black and Latino communities in a district where they are routinely and systematically unable to influence elections for their representative of choice, despite the existence of strong racially polarized voting and a history of racial discrimination and segregation on Staten Island,” the filing reads.
The lawsuit calls for the current congressional map to be declared in violation of state law and for the district to be redrawn so that Staten Island is “paired with voters in lower Manhattan to create a minority influence district in CD-11 that complies with traditional redistricting criteria.”
The plaintiffs are being represented by the Elias Law Group, a Democratic law firm that has undertaken numerous redistricting cases across the country, and the matter was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The 11th Congressional District is currently represented by Nicole Malliotakis, the lone Republican member of Congress in New York City. Ed Cox, the New York Republican Party chairman, called the lawsuit “frivolous” in a statement. “Everyone should see this effort for what it is: a naked attempt to disenfranchise voters in NY-11 and elect a Democrat to this congressional district contrary to the will of voters,” he said.
It’s unclear how successful this legal challenge will ultimately be. Currently, New York delegates the responsibility of drawing district lines to an independent redistricting commission, the result of a voter-backed amendment to the state constitution. That panel fell into controversy in 2022 after its bipartisan members failed to come to an agreement on a pair of maps, prompting a controversial intervention from the state legislature, which drew new lines that were quickly subject to lawsuits. That dispute devolved into a much larger saga that resulted in the courts appointing a special master to draw its own lines.
But Representative Dan Goldman, whose neighboring district contains parts of lower Manhattan, signaled that he would challenge Malliotakis if his district is ultimately redrawn to include Staten Island. “NY-10 is my home, and I will be running for Congress in my home district. If Staten Island is drawn into my district, then I will be ready to step up and take the fight for democracy and a Democratic House majority to Nicole Malliotakis’s doorstep. Nothing can stand in the way of us defeating Donald Trump and his spineless lackeys in Congress. Flipping the House isn’t optional — our future depends on it,” he said in a statement.
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Nia Prater
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