A handful of New York state senators and several private citizens filed a lawsuit on Monday that challenges Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries's Prison-based Gerrymandering Law.
The legislation, which passed last August, put an end to the practice of counting prisoners in the Census within the district where they are incarcerated instead of their home communities, thereby affecting the way federal monies are allocated.
Jeffries, who sponsored the legislation with then-State Senator Eric Schneiderman, argued that prison-based gerrymandering distorted districts, where seven Upstate districts met minimum population requirements only by claiming incarcerated people as residents, and where in some rural municipal and county districts Upstate, half of the population is incarcerated.
The suit was filed in state Supreme Court in Albany on Monday and argues that the law is unconstitutional, because the state doesn't have the power to alter the Census, which is a federally run program.
The suit claims that the communities in question would lose political clout, yet still be required to provide basic services – fire, police and infrastructure – to the facilities that house the prisoners, even though they are no longer considered residents.
But Jeffries disagrees, calling the suit baseless.
"This lawsuit represents a transparent attempt to breathe life into the prison industrial complex, in order to exploit the continued criminalization of individuals who disproportionally come from low-income, urban communities of color," said Jeffries yesterday, in a written statement.
"The constitutional concerns raised in the lawsuit are unfounded and are simply designed to mask a naked attempt to maintain political power."
New York will go through the redistricting process next year using the latest 2010 U.S. Census data that reflects the new count, although the state legislature has not yet decided the process for redistricting.
However, Jeffries doesn't seem to be biting his nails over this one, as one of the original sponsors of the law is now attorney general.
"I am confident that Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will successfully defend this groundbreaking and important change in state law."
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