The lone Republican member of the House of Representatives in New York City is asking the country’s highest court to block Democratic-backed gerrymandering of her congressional seat.
New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis filed a petition with the Supreme Court late last week asking it to halt a state court-ordered redrawing of New York’s congressional maps ahead of the November midterm elections.
The New York state Supreme Court ruled last month that Malliotakis’ district unfairly disempowers Black and Latino voters after Democratic attorney Marc Elias’ law firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of four New York residents.
New York’s 11th Congressional District (NY-11), which Malliotakis won in 2020, covers all of Staten Island and a small portion of southern Brooklyn. It’s the only district in New York represented by a Republican after Malliotakis defeated one-term former New York Rep. Max Ross.
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Rep. Nicole Malliotakis is petitioning the Supreme Court to block an effort by New York Democrats to redraw her congressional seat.
(Getty Images)
Malliotakis’ court petition argued that the Manhattan court “violated the Equal Protection Clause” by “barring New York state from holding congressional elections until the state racially gerrymanders her district.”
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The Republican congresswoman noted in a recent interview with Fox News Digital that she is Latina and that her mother fled the communist regime in Cuba.
“When I became the first Hispanic elected to represent this district, they made it even more ridiculous by claiming that Hispanics and minorities were somehow disenfranchised,” Malliotakis said at the time.
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The ruling by state court Judge Jeffrey Pearlman found that “black, Latino and Asian Staten Islanders continue to lag behind white Staten Islanders in political representation and participation” in violation of the New York State Constitution.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, November 3, 2025
“Racially polarized voting demonstrates that contested minority groups vote as a whole as white voters do, and that candidates favored by minority groups ‘generally’ lose,” Pearlman’s decision said. “Petitioners have demonstrated that here.”
Malliotakis’ petition to the Supreme Court states, “The New York State Legislature passed CD11’s current boundaries two years ago, with an overwhelming majority of the Legislature’s Black and Latino members voting in favor.”
However, it argued that the lawsuit was filed “less than four months ago on the theory that the votes of CD11’s Black and Latino voters (who make up approximately 23% of CD11) were unconstitutionally diluted because they selected candidates with only a 25% chance of winning.”
The petition says the court’s decision to “racially gerrymander” the district is “a recipe for unconstitutional chaos without proper maps, uncertainty over whether nominating petitions can begin circulating on February 24, and no end in sight.”
But Democrats have been salivating at the idea of unseating the deep blue city’s only House Republican.
“This ruling is the first step in ensuring that communities of interest from Staten Island to lower Manhattan remain intact,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a statement last month.
New York is one of several states locked in the redistricting battles sweeping the United States.
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It started in Texas last year, when the state’s Republican-led Legislature redrawn congressional maps, giving Republicans an advantage of as many as five new House seats.
California soon followed suit, creating a new map that gave Democrats the same advantage.
Original source of the article: Latino House Republican asks Supreme Court to block Democrats’ bid to expel her from Congress over ‘racial gerrymandering’
