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Republicans sue to redraw Congressional lines
Luis Ferré-Sadurní reports for The New York Times that on Feb. 3 a Republican-led group of voters filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn New York’s new congressional maps as unconstitutional. Democratic lawmakers in Albany last week approved district lines that would favor their party election's for the next decade. “This court should reject it as a matter of substance, as the map is an obviously unconstitutional partisan and incumbent-protection gerrymander,” said the lawsuit, which was brought by 14 voters. The lawsuit that claims the redistricting “brazenly enacted a congressional map that is undeniably politically gerrymandered in their party’s favor” was filed in State Supreme Court in Steuben County, a Republican stronghold in the state’s Southern Tier. The courts, however, have never turned down a map approved by the Legislature. "The state courts are really going to be really reluctant to overturn a state legislatively enacted plan," said Jeffrey Wice, who heads the New York Census and Redistricting Institute. “The question is whether the court will reject 50 years of precedent and reject the plan." Read more about this story in The New York Times.