After a legal battle spanning nearly four years, New York’s top court on Thursday struck down a city law as unconstitutional that would’ve expanded the right to vote in local elections to hundreds of thousands of noncitizen residents.
The ruling from the State Court of Appeals likely marks the final nail in the coffin for the law, as the City Council, which adopted the measure in 2021, has no higher venue to appeal the matter to.
In the 21-page ruling, issued by six of the top court’s seven jurists, Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote that New York’s constitution leaves no wiggle room when it comes to who has the right to vote in the Empire State.
“It is facially clear that only citizens may vote in elections within the State of New York,” he wrote.
However, Wilson, citing French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote that the U.S. has long moved toward “expansion” of voting rights, typically via constitutional amendments.
“Whatever the future may bring, the New York Constitution as it stands today draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens,” Wilson added.
Spokespeople for the overwhelmingly Democratic City Council, which has defended the law in court, didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Adams, who allowed the Council bill to lapse into law in January 2022 without signing it, stressed it was the Council, not the mayor, who pursued the appeal to Wilson’s bench after lower courts ruled the law unconstitutional too.
“The highest court in New York State has made its decision, and we respect the court’s ruling,” added the Adams spokeswoman, Kayla Mamelak.
The law would’ve granted green card holders and some other legal immigrant New York City residents the right to vote in most local elections, including for mayor, public advocate, comptroller and Council. It would not have given such residents the right to vote in presidential or gubernatorial elections.
At the time it passed the law in late 2021, the Council estimated it would’ve given 800,000 new city residents the right to vote locally.
But the same day the law took effect, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella and other local Republicans sued to block it, arguing it flew in the face of the state constitution. Opponents of the law have also claimed an expansion of voting rights would unfairly help Democratic candidate for public office.
A court fight has dragged on ever since the Fossella lawsuit, and amid it, the mayor’s administration hasn’t moved to implement the law.
Associate Court of Appeals Judge Jenny Rivera, the lone dissenter to Thursday’s ruling, wrote in her own opinion that the city’s home rule ability to have decision-making power over local matters should’ve trumped the state constitutional restriction.
The decision from her colleagues, Rivera added, “diminishes the power of localities statewide.”