A Republican congresswoman, the GOP co-chair of New York's board of elections, and a group of voters are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a state trial judge barred New York from using its current congressional map — and ordered the district lines redrawn to engineer a specific racial outcome.

The filings, distributed to reporters on Friday, land at the Supreme Court with an extraordinarily tight clock. As reported by ScotusBlog, petitioning for the 2026 elections begins February 24. The Court has given the opposing side until 4 p.m. Thursday to respond.

If the justices don't act fast, New York's congressional elections face what one petitioner called "chaos and uncertainty" — all because a single trial court judge invented a new legal standard nobody actually argued for.

What the Trial Court Did

Back in October 2025, a group of voters sued in state court, claiming the 11th Congressional District — based on Staten Island and stretching into parts of southern Brooklyn — violated the New York constitution by diluting Black and Latino votes. On January 21, 2026, Justice Jeffrey Pearlman agreed. He prohibited the state from using the existing map and instructed the state's independent redistricting commission to complete a replacement by February 6.

That alone would have been aggressive. But the real problem, according to the petitioners, is how Pearlman got there.

Peter Kosinski, Republican co-chair of New York's board of elections, told the Supreme Court that Pearlman tossed aside the legal standard the parties had actually litigated — one derived from the New York Voting Rights Act — and replaced it with something pulled from a friend-of-the-court brief. As Kosinski put it in his filing:

"As a matter of due process, the trial court cannot reject the only standard litigated by the parties and adopt something wholly new: a novel three-prong standard."

That novel standard requires three things: that minority voters can select their preferred candidates in the primary, that those candidates will usually win the general election, and that the redrawn district increases minority voter influence so they play a "decisive role" in candidate selection.

Read that again. The judge didn't just find that the current map was flawed. He ordered the state to draw a district where a specific racial group controls primaries and wins most general elections. That's not anti-gerrymandering. That's gerrymandering with a mandate.

The Equal Protection Problem

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who represents the 11th District, framed the issue in constitutional terms. In her Supreme Court filing, she argued that Pearlman's decision requires the state "to adopt an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."

She elaborated that the ruling prohibits New York from running any congressional elections until it racially gerrymanders the district:

"Adding [enough] Black and Latino voters from elsewhere, until the Black and Latino voters in CD11 control contested primaries and win most general elections."

The Trump administration agrees. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the effort to block Pearlman's ruling. Sauer drew a distinction between this case and other ongoing redistricting fights:

"Unlike recent redistricting disputes from California and Texas involving thorny questions about the relationship between partisan and racial gerrymandering … as States race to redraw their electoral maps before the 2026 midterms, this case presents an open and unabashed racial gerrymander."

The Solicitor General's argument is direct: what Pearlman ordered doesn't just flirt with an equal protection violation — it demands one.

A Clock That's Already Run Out

The procedural mess compounds the constitutional one. After Pearlman's January ruling, Malliotakis and Kosinski went to two state appeals courts seeking a pause. The New York Court of Appeals — the state's highest court — said it lacked jurisdiction. The intermediate appellate court hasn't acted at all.

There's one narrow piece of good news: under state law, the appeal automatically froze the portion of Pearlman's order directing the redistricting commission to draw a new map by February 6. So no new map has been produced.

But the prohibition on using the current map remains live. And the calendar is merciless. Kosinski spelled it out in his filing:

"[A]t this point it is impossible for the IRC to propose a new map, and for the Legislature to adopt any such map, in time for petitioning to start on February 24, 2026."

He warned that if the Supreme Court doesn't intervene by February 23, New York's congressional elections will be thrown into chaos. That gives the Court roughly a week from the response deadline to decide.

The Larger Game

Demographics on Staten Island have shifted. Black and Latino voters now make up approximately 30% of the population, while the white population has dropped to 56%. Those are real changes, and they'll shape electoral outcomes naturally over time — as they should.

But there's a difference between demographic change producing new political dynamics and a judge ordering district lines redrawn so that a particular racial group dominates a particular electoral outcome. The first is democracy. The second is social engineering with a gavel.

This is the contradiction the left never resolves. Racial gerrymandering is supposed to be the original sin of American redistricting — until a court does it in the name of racial equity, at which point it becomes a moral imperative. The Equal Protection Clause doesn't come with an asterisk that says "unless your intentions are progressive."

And the procedural corner-cutting makes it worse. A trial court judge adopted a legal theory that neither side argued. He set a redistricting deadline that was functionally impossible to meet. Two appellate courts either punted or went silent. The result is a district in legal limbo with an election weeks away.

What Comes Next

The Supreme Court's response deadline is Thursday at 4 p.m. After that, the justices will decide whether to stay Pearlman's order. Given the Solicitor General's involvement and the impossible timeline, this is the kind of emergency application the Court was built to handle.

The question isn't complicated. A judge ordered a state to sort voters by race and draw lines that guarantee racial outcomes. The Constitution has a word for that — and it isn't "justice."