Little v. LATFOR documents

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Background
Intervenors and Counsel
Press releases
Legal Documents

Background

The Prison Policy Initiative, as part of a group of organizations representing three nonprofit groups and fifteen voters, has requested to intervene in Little v. LATFOR, the case challenging New York's new law allocating incarcerated persons to their home districts for redistricting and reapportionment.

The Brennan Center for Justice, The Center for Law and Social Justice, D­ēmos, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the New York Civil Liberties Union have joined the Prison Policy Initiative in seeking to defend the new law against the legal challenge brought by New York State Senator Elizabeth Little and others.

Previously, legislative districts with prisons were credited with the population of the disenfranchised people temporarily incarcerated there. This practice, often called prison-based gerrymandering, gives extra influence to voters who live in the district with the most prisons, and dilutes the votes of every resident of districts with fewer prisons. The new law corrects this bias, requiring that incarcerated persons be counted as residents of their home communities, in accordance with the New York State Constitution’s provision that incarceration does not change one’s residence. The legislation applies to state and local legislative redistricting, and would not affect federal funding distributions.

The most dramatic examples of prison-based gerrymandering are in upstate counties and cities.  For example, half of a Rome City Council ward is incarcerated, giving the residents of that ward twice the influence of other city residents. Recognizing the distorting effect of prison-based gerrymandering at the local level, thirteen New York counties with large prisons – including four in Senator Little’s district – have historically exercised their discretion to remove the prison populations prior to redistricting.

The new law brings consistency to redistricting in New York, prohibiting the state and all local governments from giving extra political influence to districts that contain prisons. Sen. Little’s lawsuit seeks to have the new legislation struck down, the effect of which would require  legislative districts – most notably her own, which contains 12,000 incarcerated persons – to include prison populations in their apportionment counts to the detriment of all other districts without prisons.

Returning to this practice would not only unfairly inflate the districts of those with prisons at the expense of those without but also violate the New York State Constitution.

Intervenors and Counsel

The intervenors are:

  • Fifteen voters, from both urban and rural districts, who will suffer unfairly distorted representation in state or local government for various reasons, should the new law be overturned.

The proposed intervenors also included:

  • NAACP New York State Conference -- The Conference is the state-level body of the NAACP, a membership organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the civil rights of African Americans and other people of color. The Conference has approximately 90,000 members statewide. 
  • Common Cause / New York -- CC/NY is the New York branch of Common Cause, a nationwide, nonpartisan organization with 20,000 members in New York State. The group advocates for honest, accountable, and responsive government.
  • Voices of Community Activists and Leaders - New York, or VOCAL-NY -- VOCAL-NY is a statewide grassroots membership organization building power among low-income people who are living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, drug use and incarceration, along with the organizations that serve them, to create healthy and just communities.

In addition to the Prison Policy Initiative, the groups providing counsel to the intervenors include the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for Law and Social Justice, Dēmos, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Press releases, news coverage & editorials

Legal documents and related materials