April 5 (UPI) — An appellate judge in New York has stayed a lower court’s decision to strike down the state’s new congressional redistricting map to allow for litigation over its legality to continue.
The pause by Justice Stephen Lindley of New York’s Fourth Appellate Department in Rochester came days after a state Supreme Court judge ordered lawmakers to redraw the congressional map after saying the one Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law in early February was unconstitutional as it benefited Democrats.
Hochul promptly appealed the decision.
On Monday, Lindley issued a temporary stay against the lower court’s decision without weighing in on the case’s merits in order to expedite litigation.
“The appeal will be greatly accelerated for obvious reasons, and I anticipate that a decision could be rendered within the next three weeks, if not sooner,” he wrote.
State Republicans petitioned the court to invalidate the congressional map as unconstitutional after Hochul signed it into law, arguing the Democrat-controlled legislature violated a 2014 constitutional amendment concerning a bipartisan commission having control of the redistricting map and that the map is “an obviously unconstitutional partisan and incumbent-protection gerrymander.”
State Superior Court Judge Patrick McAllister of Steuben County agreed with the Republicans and wrote in his March 31 decision that: “The court finds by clear evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt that the congressional map with political bias.”
Lindley on Monday also instructed the Republican and Democratic lawyers to attend a hearing Thursday while the new congressional map remains in effect.
