Voters of shade in Nassau County, N.Y., a segregated suburb of New York City, are waging an unprecedented redistricting struggle underneath a state voting rights act, an rising instrument for shielding voting rights on the native degree.

Tracy J. Lee for NPR

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Tracy J. Lee for NPR

Voters of shade in Nassau County, N.Y., a segregated suburb of New York City, are waging an unprecedented redistricting struggle underneath a state voting rights act, an rising instrument for shielding voting rights on the native degree.

Tracy J. Lee for NPR

NASSAU COUNTY, N.Y. — In 2020, Maria Jordan-Awalom marched throughout an invisible line in one of the most segregated regions of the nation.

After the police homicide of George Floyd, she and different demonstrators took to the streets for racial justice on this New York City suburb, simply east of the borough of Queens on Long Island.

There have been no barricades blocking the highway into the following group over, however crossing from the predominantly Latino and Black village of Freeport into the predominantly white hamlet of Merrick, their peaceable protest was met with jeers.

“Go back to where you came from!” Jordan-Awalom remembers listening to from onlookers on the sidewalk.

“It hits different when you’re an immigrant, obviously,” says the president of Freeport’s faculty board, who was born in El Salvador and first moved to this village on Long Island’s south shore as a young person. “But also knowing that [they] were just angry because we were Black and brown people, that’s what hurt more. We’re neighbors.”

Almost 4 years later, neighbors from the 2 communities are sharing the identical consultant in county authorities. That’s as a result of, in early 2023, officers within the Republican-controlled Nassau County Legislature accepted a redistricting plan that drew giant swaths of Freeport and Merrick into the identical voting district.

The new political map has left Jordan-Awalom questioning: “What similarities do we have with the community who is telling us, ‘Go back to where you came from’?”

The legislation agency that created the map with the county’s then-top Republican legislator pointed to the communities’ fireplace departments offering emergency backup providers for one another, plus a shared rail line and an “economic corridor” operating alongside the identical highway the place Jordan-Awalom marched.

Still, the map has perplexed many residents of shade. In a county scarred by decades of housing discrimination, they are saying its voting districts cut up up their communities and ignore lots of the traces that separate them from predominantly white areas.

A bunch of them, together with Jordan-Awalom, and a corporation known as New York Communities for Change are actually waging a authorized battle towards the map with stakes that transcend the shores of Long Island.

On Wednesday, they filed a novel lawsuit, arguing that the Nassau County Legislature deliberately handed a redistricting plan that discriminates towards Black, Latino and Asian American voters so as to give Republican candidates a bonus in elections. Their case couldn’t solely lead to a special set of voting districts for a county of near 1.4 million residents, but additionally create a pathway for voters of shade elsewhere to guide a brand new form of struggle towards racial discrimination in redistricting on the native degree.

Maria Jordan-Awalom, a resident of Freeport, N.Y., says she is combating for a brand new redistricting plan for the Nassau County Legislature that retains her predominantly Latino and Black village united in a single voting district. “I feel like if we’re not represented as whole, the representative will go to that powerful white voice before they listen to our concerns,” Jordan-Awalom says.

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Maria Jordan-Awalom, a resident of Freeport, N.Y., says she is combating for a brand new redistricting plan for the Nassau County Legislature that retains her predominantly Latino and Black village united in a single voting district. “I feel like if we’re not represented as whole, the representative will go to that powerful white voice before they listen to our concerns,” Jordan-Awalom says.

Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

In Nassau County, voters of shade and white voters are likely to prefer different candidates. And the variety of folks figuring out as white and never Hispanic has dropped greater than 11% over the previous decade, as Black, Latino and Asian American residents now make up greater than a 3rd of eligible voters. But on the present map for the county legislature, these voters of shade make up nearly all of eligible voters in solely 4 out of 19 districts, or lower than 1 / 4. The map’s challengers argue there must be six such districts.

“The white voice always seems to overpower our voices. And I feel like if we’re not represented as whole, the representative will go to that powerful white voice before they listen to our concerns,” says Jordan-Awalom, who needs to maintain her village united in a single voting district. “We have had the same fight for so long, so obviously we’re not being heard. And I think it has to change.”

That change, she hopes, will come by way of an unprecedented method of straight difficult an area voting map underneath a state voting rights act — an rising instrument that advocates hope can assist fortify the rights of voters of shade as opponents continue to chip away at protections towards racial discrimination underneath the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Legal consultants, nonetheless, warn that critics of state voting rights acts are keen to check the constitutionality of those state legal guidelines with the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, and this New York case may spark an enchantment that will in the end result in the undoing of those protections throughout the United States.

How New York’s state voting rights act led to a brand new form of redistricting lawsuit

In the last decade because the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, a small however rising variety of states — together with Washington, Oregon, Virginia, New York and Connecticut — have adopted the lead of the California Voting Rights Act of 2002 by putting in extra authorized protections towards racial discrimination in voting. New York’s John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act was signed into legislation in 2022.

The scope of every legislation is completely different, together with how they apply to particular elections. While there have been many redistricting lawsuits underneath state voting rights acts over the previous twenty years, these circumstances have been challenges to elections through which a number of candidates are elected as at-large representatives of 1 voting district.

New York’s state voting rights act is amongst those who enable a map of a number of voting districts, every with a single consultant, to be challenged in court docket for diluting the collective energy of voters of shade. And the lawsuit towards the Nassau County Legislature’s map is breaking new authorized floor in state courts, in keeping with Ruth Greenwood, an expert on state voting rights acts, who directs Harvard Law School’s Election Law Clinic.

“A lot of lawyers like to think that the U.S. Supreme Court is as fancy as it gets and you should try to do everything you can there,” Greenwood says. “But the reality is that if you’re trying to protect communities, you need to use the absolute best tools available to them. And in this case, the U.S. Supreme Court is not a friend to the Voting Rights Act. And so it makes sense to go through state voting rights acts.”

To argue {that a} voting map dilutes the collective energy of voters of shade underneath the federal Voting Rights Act, challengers have to indicate in court docket that, within the phrases of a landmark Supreme Court ruling, “the minority group” could make up nearly all of and match inside a “majority-minority district” — a hurdle that may take a variety of time and redistricting consultants to beat. That’s not the case with these state voting rights acts.

That distinction permits these state legal guidelines to deal with racial discrimination in locations the place residential segregation is probably not as excessive, says Perry Grossman, who helped develop New York’s state voting rights act and is now the lead lawyer for the Nassau County map’s challengers.

“It’s taking less taxpayer resources and less resources on the side of voters of color to root out that discrimination,” says Grossman, who additionally directs the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project. “It also offers more opportunities for jurisdictions to remediate their schemes voluntarily, which we want to see. We want to see jurisdictions take that opportunity to do it themselves rather than get sued for it.”

The challengers of Nassau County’s map tried to keep away from a lawsuit by sending a formal letter in December to county officers, as required by New York’s state voting rights act. The letter claimed the present redistricting plan shouldn’t be consistent with the state legislation as a result of its boundaries impaired the flexibility of communities of shade to elect their candidates of selection and affect election outcomes.

But the county legislature has refused to make any modifications, protecting in place a map that was launched late within the redistricting course of by the highest Republican legislator on the time, Richard Nicolello, who rejected plans put forth by a bipartisan redistricting advisory commission.

The legislature handed that map in February 2023 on a party-line vote with 11 Republicans in favor and 7 Democrats towards it. The vote got here after contentious public hearings, the place Democratic county legislators had a tough time getting Nicolello and an lawyer from Troutman Pepper, the Atlanta-based legislation agency that put collectively Nicolello’s map, to elaborate on how they got here up with the districts.

No districts in Nassau County wanted to or might be “race-focused districts” so as to be consistent with the federal Voting Rights Act, concluded Sean Trende, an elections analyst for RealClearPolitics who suggested Nicolello, in keeping with a memo released by Troutman Pepper.

“We, therefore, did not consider race any further in redistricting because that would have been unconstitutional,” lawyer Misha Tseytlin, a accomplice at Troutman Pepper who beforehand served as Wisconsin’s solicitor basic, explained at one listening to.

Tseytlin later added that the agency thought it is very important learn New York’s John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act “consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent against racial gerrymandering.”

“Any other conclusion that would read the John Lewis law as a requirement for infusing race into every redistricting decision, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of words, would render the John Lewis law unconstitutional, and we definitely don’t want to do that,” Tseytlin said.

Tseytlin, Trende and the legislature’s Republican majority caucus, by way of a spokesperson, declined NPR’s interview requests. But in an e-mail assertion, Mary Studdert, the caucus’ spokesperson, stated: “The adopted maps incorporated feedback from the public’s testimony from over a dozen public hearings, while meeting all legal and constitutional standards, uniting communities of interest and ensuring equal representation for the residents of Nassau County.”

“…they put that lid right back on top of us”

Lisa Ortiz, an Afro-Latina resident of southern Nassau County, nonetheless, is anxious that illustration shouldn’t be equal now that her dwelling within the predominantly Black hamlet of Lakeview has been drawn into the identical district because the predominantly white village of Malverne.

The change compelled Lakeview out of a district with neighboring communities of shade, and Ortiz, a registered Democrat who was beforehand represented by a Black Democrat, now has a county legislator who’s a white Republican.

“When you think about Lakeview being grouped into a district that really has the power to silence our vote, it discourages people. Why should I go out and vote? My vote is not even going to count. That defeats the purpose of living in a democracy,” says Ortiz, who is likely one of the redistricting plan’s challengers within the lawsuit.

Lisa Ortiz, a resident of Lakeview, N.Y., stands underneath the brand new road signal for Acorn Way within the predominantly white village of Malverne, the place many Black college students from Lakeview attend colleges. The road was beforehand named Lindner Place after a pacesetter of the Ku Klux Klan in New York.

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Lisa Ortiz, a resident of Lakeview, N.Y., stands underneath the brand new road signal for Acorn Way within the predominantly white village of Malverne, the place many Black college students from Lakeview attend colleges. The road was beforehand named Lindner Place after a pacesetter of the Ku Klux Klan in New York.

Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Troutman Pepper, the legislation agency that drew the county legislature’s map, justified the change by citing the “strong community of interest” created by the 2 communities sharing the identical faculty district.

But many Lakeview residents keep in mind the struggle to get the district to fund school bussing for Black students in Lakeview after the district was ordered to desegregate. And till final 12 months, the road in entrance of one of many district’s elementary colleges in Malverne was named after a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in New York, Paul Lindner, who was as soon as additionally the namesake of the college.

Ortiz was relieved to see Lindner Place change into Acorn Way on the unveiling of the brand new road signal final January, weeks earlier than the Nassau County Legislature handed the brand new voting map.

“We were able to accomplish one thing with the street renaming, but then they put that lid right back on top of us,” Ortiz says.

Why this redistricting struggle may find yourself earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court

Towards the northwest nook of Nassau County, Jerry Vattamala, an Indian American resident of the village of New Hyde Park, sees an identical tactic taking part in out by way of the present redistricting plan. The county’s Asian American inhabitants has grown over the previous decade by round 60%, the best price amongst all racial and ethnic teams.

The map’s traces reduce by way of a rising Asian American group in an space often called Greater New Hyde Park, the place thoroughfares are lined with gurdwaras, Hindu temples, bubble tea outlets and Asian-owned grocery shops, plus annual occasions for Diwali and Lunar New Year are organized by city authorities officers.

“Anyone that lives in the area just by looking at it can see, ‘Oh, look! They divided us into three different districts’ — right in the heart of where most of the people live,” says Vattamala, who’s a member of New York Communities for Change, one of many map’s challengers.

Because of the place Asian American residents reside within the county, it could be tough to attract a viable voting district the place Asian Americans make up the bulk.

But Vattamala hopes to see a brand new map with what’s recognized within the redistricting world as an “influence district,” the place there could be sufficient Asian American voters to have a big affect on who’s elected to the Nassau County Legislature, which has but to have an elected legislator of Asian descent. Under the present map, two Democratic candidates who may have been the county’s first Asian American legislators misplaced to Republicans final 12 months in races for seats in Greater New Hyde Park.

“We’re not asking for special treatment or to have any type of advantage,” says Vattamala, an lawyer who leads the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Democracy Program. “What we’re demanding is an equal opportunity to elect a candidate of our choice, just like other communities enjoy, mainly the white community in Nassau County.”

Jerry Vattamala attended a Lunar New Year occasion organized by officers from the city of North Hempstead, N.Y., in January. Vattamala says he hopes to see a brand new voting district with sufficient Asian American voters to have a big affect on who’s elected to the Nassau County Legislature, which has but to have an elected legislator of Asian descent.

Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

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Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Jerry Vattamala attended a Lunar New Year occasion organized by officers from the city of North Hempstead, N.Y., in January. Vattamala says he hopes to see a brand new voting district with sufficient Asian American voters to have a big affect on who’s elected to the Nassau County Legislature, which has but to have an elected legislator of Asian descent.

Hansi Lo Wang/NPR

Still, Greenwood of Harvard’s Election Law Clinic warns that critics of state voting rights could also be getting ready to problem that place in court docket by arguing that what legal guidelines equivalent to New York’s require in redistricting quantities to racial gerrymandering.

“I think some people see that when you’re trying to enfranchise people of color, they see that as creating maybe a quota or some set-aside so that people of color have access to the political system,” Greenwood says.

Greenwood has helped file friend-of-the-court briefs arguing towards a Republican precinct committee officer in Washington’s Franklin County who has requested the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case about the constitutionality of Washington’s state voting rights act.

The case towards the Nassau County Legislature’s map could also be headed for the excessive court docket, too.

“If this leads to the New York voting rights act getting struck down as unconstitutional, that won’t only affect people in Nassau County,” Greenwood says. “It’ll affect everybody in New York and potentially everybody in all of the states that have state voting rights acts.”

It’s a attainable situation that Tseytlin, the Troutman Pepper lawyer, hinted at a number of instances final 12 months throughout a public listening to concerning the county’s map.

“This was just enacted,” Tseytlin stated concerning the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York. “This is the first cycle. Perhaps, there will be a test case here coming up.”

Edited by Benjamin Swasey

Visuals edited by Grace Widyatmadja

Research by Jane Gilvin, Nicolette Khan and Barclay Walsh