{"id":4362,"date":"2011-12-02T17:43:21","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T22:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=4362"},"modified":"2023-10-18T14:16:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T18:16:27","slug":"ny-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2011\/12\/02\/ny-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Albany Judge Upholds Law Ending Prison-Based Gerrymandering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victory for Civil Rights, Fair Representation Removes Any Doubt That Redistricting Body Can Proceed Under New Law<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

For Immediate Release: Dec. 2, 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Please Contact:<\/caption>\n
Brennan Center for Justice<\/td>\nAndrew Goldston<\/td>\n(646) 292-8372<\/td>\nandrew.goldston@nyu.edu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Center for Law & Social Justice<\/td>\nApril Silver<\/td>\n(718) 756-8501<\/td>\npr@akilaworksongs.com<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dēmos<\/td>\nAnna Pycior<\/td>\n(212) 389-1408<\/td>\napycior@demos.org<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
LatinoJustice<\/td>\nMadeline Friedman<\/td>\n(212) 739-7581<\/td>\nmfriedman@latinojustice.org<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
NAACP Legal Defense Fund<\/td>\nMel Gagarin<\/td>\n(212) 965-2783<\/td>\nmgagarin@naacpldf.org<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
NYCLU<\/td>\nMichael Cummings<\/td>\n(212) 607-3300 x368<\/td>\nmcummings@nyclu.org<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Prison Policy Initiative<\/td>\nPeter Wagner<\/td>\n(413) 527-0845<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Albany, NY<\/strong> \u2013 New York Supreme Court Justice Eugene Devine today upheld New York\u2019s law ending prison-based gerrymandering in the Little v. LATFOR lawsuit. His decision<\/a> squarely rejects the plaintiffs\u2019 claim that the New York law violated various provisions of the New York State Constitution.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for the fifteen voters from around New York State who joined the suit as intervenor-defendants issued the following joint statement:<\/p>\n

\n

By eliminating the political distortion caused by prison-based gerrymandering, the new law upheld by today\u2019s decision will ensure fairer representation for all New Yorkers, starting with this year\u2019s redistricting. <\/p>\n

Judge Devine\u2019s decision affirms what we have known from the beginning: the law ending prison-based gerrymandering advances fairness in redistricting and is in complete agreement with New York\u2019s state constitution.<\/span> Now that Justice Devine has made his decision, we look forward to seeing LATFOR implement the new law in the coming months.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The organizations representing the fifteen voters in court were the Brennan Center for Justice<\/a>, the Center for Law & Social Justice<\/a>, Dēmos<\/a>, LatinoJustice PRLDEF<\/a>, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund<\/a>, the New York Civil Liberties Union<\/a>, and the Prison Policy Initiative<\/a>. In today’s ruling rejecting Plaintiffs’ legal challenge, the Court repeatedly cited the organizations’ arguments explaining the policies and legal precedent supporting New York\u2019s law.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 4, Judge Devine granted the fifteen voters permission to intervene<\/a> and defend the law. The defendants in the lawsuit were government bodies charged with carrying out the new law: the New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR), and the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). The New York State Attorney General\u2019s office is representing DOCCS.<\/p>\n

The new law, known as \u201cPart XX,\u201d requires that incarcerated persons be allocated to their home communities for state and local redistricting and reapportionment but does not affect funding distributions<\/a>. This tracks with the New York State Constitution\u2019s explicit provision that incarceration does not change one\u2019s residence.<\/p>\n

New York State Senator Elizabeth Little and a group of co-plaintiffs sought to restore New York\u2019s former practice, which artificially inflated the voting strength of select communities<\/a> at the expense of all others by allocating incarcerated persons to the districts where prisons are located, rather than to their home addresses.<\/p>\n

A recent Quinnipiac University poll<\/a> reported that public opinion is against prison-based gerrymandering, with a majority of New York State voters agreeing that \u201cprison inmates should be counted as residents of their home districts, not of where they\u2019re imprisoned.\u201d The poll found that majorities of voters from both parties, and majorities of both upstate and downstate voters, favored \u201ccounting inmates in their homes, not their prisons.\u201d<\/p>\n

About Prison-Based Gerrymandering<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

There are dramatic examples of prison-based gerrymandering in upstate counties and cities. For example, half of a council ward in the city of Rome, New York<\/a> is incarcerated. As a result, the actual residents of that ward wield twice the influence of other city residents. Recognizing the distortions caused by prison-based gerrymandering at the local level, 13 New York counties with large prisons \u2013 including four in plaintiff Senator Little\u2019s district \u2013 have historically exercised their discretion to remove the prison populations prior to redistricting. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The new law brings consistency to redistricting in New York<\/a>, prohibiting the state and all local governments from giving extra political influence to districts that contain prisons. Sen. Little\u2019s lawsuit sought to have the new legislation struck down, the effect of which would require legislative districts \u2013 including her own, which contains 12,000 incarcerated persons \u2013 to include prisons when redistricting, to the detriment of all other districts without prisons. <\/p>\n

Returning to this practice would have unfairly inflated districts containing prisons to the detriment of everyone else and would have violated the New York State Constitution<\/a>. In addition, many areas containing large minority communities have been disproportionately affected by this practice, effectively diluting the votes of minority communities. The enactment of Part XX was considered a major civil rights achievement for New York State.<\/p>\n

The legal documents can be found at the Prison Policy Initiative’s web page for Little v. LATFOR, http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/little\/<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

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New York Supreme Court Justice Eugene Devine today upheld New York’s law ending prison-based gerrymandering in the Little v. LATFOR lawsuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-4362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of","category-press-release","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10337,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4362\/revisions\/10337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4362"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}