What happened
The U.S. Supreme Court on March 2 stayed a New York trial-court order requiring the state's redistricting commission to draw a new congressional district for New York's 11th Congressional District while state appeals and any timely certiorari petition play out.
The stay freezes a Jan. 21 order from the Supreme Court of New York, New York County, and remains in place through the state appellate process and any timely petition to the high court. If certiorari is denied, the stay ends automatically; if review is granted, it ends when the Supreme Court issues its mandate.
The dispute concerns a district Justice Sotomayor described as covering all of Staten Island and part of southwestern Brooklyn and currently represented by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis. New York voters sued state election officials in October 2025, alleging the district diluted Black and Latino votes under the New York Constitution. After a four-day January trial, the state court sided with the voters and ordered the Independent Redistricting Commission to redraw the district as a crossover district satisfying criteria tied to minority voters' electoral opportunity.
Justice Alito, concurring in the stay, said the trial-court order was “unadorned racial discrimination” and that the applicants were likely to prevail on their equal protection claim because state law could not authorize a violation of federal rights. He also said the Supreme Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §1257 and authority under the All Writs Act to grant relief before the state appeal process made later high-court review impractical.
Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, saying the court had taken an unprecedented step by staying a state trial-court redistricting order before New York's highest court had a chance to act on the relevant request. She argued there was no final decision from New York's highest court on any federal question and that the applicants had not asked the Court of Appeals to act after the Appellate Division denied a stay.
The ruling matters beyond the Staten Island and Brooklyn district because it puts the justices' emergency election-law practice, the Purcell principle and Supreme Court review of state-court proceedings in direct tension. For now, the case returns to the New York appellate courts with the trial court's remedial order on hold.