Supreme Court Hands GOP Win, Rejects Democrat ‘Racial Discrimination’ Case Targeting Latina Republican

The Supreme Court sided with Republican New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis on Monday, preventing her district from being gerrymandered to favor Democrats ahead of the midterms.

Malliotakis, whose district includes all of Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn, urged the high court to block a January state court ruling that she claimed would amount to a “racial gerrymander” and throw “New York’s elections into chaos.” This Republican redistricting win marks a setback for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has vowed to “finish” the mid-decade gerrymander war Republicans started in Texas during summer 2025.

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to keep New York’s 11th Congressional District intact helps restore the public’s confidence in our judicial system and proves the challenge to our district lines was always meritless,” Malliotakis told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “The plaintiffs in this case attempted to manipulate our state’s courts to use race as a weapon to rig our elections. That was wrong and, as demonstrated by today’s ruling, clearly unconstitutional.”

The lawmaker’s 11th congressional district is the only seat in New York City held by a Republican, and the new map would have given Democrats a significant advantage in the district.

Justice Jeffrey Pearlman, who was nominated to the bench by Gov. Kathy Hochul, had ordered New York’s redistricting commission to redraw the 11th district after finding it diluted black and Latino voters.

Malliotakis, 45, is the daughter of Cuban and Greek immigrants and grew up speaking Spanish at home. A member of the Congressional Hispanic Conference, she was first elected to the New York Assembly in 2012 and ran for Congress in 2020, unseating a Democratic incumbent.

“Unfortunately, the politicization of New York’s courts and its judges necessitated action from the nation’s highest court. I thank the Justices who stopped the voters on Staten Island and in Southern Brooklyn from being stripped of their ability to elect a representative who reflects their values,” the congresswoman added in her statement to the DCNF. “Whether I serve another term in Congress is a decision for the voters, not Democrat party bosses and their high-priced lawyers.”

Justice Samuel Alito, a leading conservative, wrote a state order requiring the map to be redrawn “blatantly discriminates on the basis of race.” The court’s three liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

“Time and again, this court has said that federal courts should not meddle with state election laws ahead of an election,” Sotomayor said in her dissent. “Today, the court says: except for this one, except for this one, and except for this one.”

State courts had halted Democrats’ Hochul-backed redistricting efforts in New York in 2022, finding that the map proposed by state legislators was gerrymandered “with impermissible partisan purpose.”

Malliotakis has no challengers in the June 23 GOP primary, while three Democrats — Michael DeCillis, Troy McGhie and Umar Usman — will face off that day for the right to challenge her in November. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race in Malliotakis’ 11th district, which President Donald Trump carried by 24 percentage points in 2024, as “Solid Republican.”

The ruling comes as Jeffries’ efforts to redraw Maryland’s single Republican seat remains gridlocked as Maryland state Senate President Bill Ferguson refuses to move on what he calls “catastrophic” mid-cycle redistricting effort.

Jeffries’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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