Battle for Home Control in ’24 Race begins in a New York courtroom

The battle for one of the most consequential congressional battlegrounds in the United States will take center stage Wednesday — not in the hotly contested suburbs or in a campaign convention hall, but in a sedate courtroom in Buffalo.

That’s where Democrats will try to convince the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, to give their party the chance to redraw the state’s congressional map before the 2024 elections.

The case will ostensibly revolve around conflicting readings of the state constitution. But the court’s decision in the coming weeks will have much more far-reaching political implications.

Thanks to the court’s intervention last year, New York now has one of the most competitive congressional maps in the country. If Democrats prevail in the current case, they will most likely try to reassert their dominance with more favorable rules, allowing them to flip as many as six Republican seats from Long Island to Syracuse.

The Republicans have a narrow majority of five seats in the House of Representatives. As the number of truly competitive districts across the country dwindles as both parties implement grim gerrymanders, the fate of New York’s map could determine which party enters 2024 with the upper hand.

“A little-known court in New York is likely about to determine control of Congress,” said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic political strategist, expressing the bipartisan concern the case is raising in New York and Washington.

So far, judicial decisions on redistricting since the 2022 midterm elections have largely offset each other at the national level. The North Carolina Supreme Court last month cleared the way for Republicans to implement an aggressive gerrymander, which could flip three to four seats to them. Democrats, in turn, could gain two to three seats in the Deep South, where federal courts have ordered Republican-led states to redraw the maps to empower black voters.

The partisan legal battle over New York’s map has raged almost continuously for two years.

It started in early 2022 when a bipartisan commission created by voters to take politics out of the map-making process stalled and failed to complete its work. Democrats who control the state legislature then tried to intervene with a plan of their own. But after Republicans filed a lawsuit, the Court of Appeals struck down the Democrats’ plan as an unconstitutional gerrymander.

The court ultimately brought in a neutral expert to draft the replacement that helped Republicans flip four districts last November and claim 11 of the 26 seats in the House of Representatives.

In the case before the Court of Appeals on Wednesday, Democrats plan to argue that the 2022 map was just a temporary fix imposed on a tight deadline. Their lawyers will ask the justices to order the commission to complete its work and then authorize the Legislature to have the final say on district boundaries.

“There is now time to set the record straight for 2024 and the rest of the decade,” the lawyers, paid by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, argue in a written brief.

Lower courts are divided on the request. A Supreme Court justice initially sided with Republicans who opposed it. But the decision was overturned in July by a five-judge appeals panel, which endorsed Democrats’ arguments.

Democratic operatives have been blunt about their ambitions.

“In states where Democrats can influence the process, they should try to pick up seats that will help Democrats win,” Mr. Ross Smith said, adding that the party could not afford to “unilaterally disarm” when Republicans lose their were exerting advantages elsewhere and the 2024 elections would be fiercely contested.

Republicans and government watchdog groups are strongly opposed to a reconsideration. They have characterized the Democrats’ lawsuit as “an attack” on the court’s 2022 redistricting decision, and have argued that Democrats are merely looking for another opportunity to push the envelope.

“Their motto: If you can’t win on a fair set of maps, just redraw it by any means necessary — including stacking the field,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, an endangered Republican from New York City’s northern suburbs. “It’s sad and they should be ashamed of themselves.”

The case will be the first major test for the seven-member Court of Appeal since it underwent a transformation earlier this year.

Janet DiFiore, the former chief justice, announced her retirement last year, not long after writing the majority decision striking down Democrats’ redistricting plan. Her successor, Judge Rowan D. Wilson, as a deputy judge, disagreed with the 2022 ruling, and Republicans believe his position could help explain why Gov. Kathy Hochul and Senate Democrats chose him to a higher level to bring.

Analysts had expected a liberal addition to the court, Judge Caitlin J. Halligan, to be the deciding vote in the redistricting case. But they unexpectedly denied herself from the case this fall with little explanation; Dianne T. Renwick, who heads a mid-level appeals court in New York City, will serve in her place.