State’s Highest Court to Decide Whether Noncitizens Can Vote in NYC Elections
The New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, will hear oral argument Tuesday on whether the New York City Noncitizen Voting Law violated the state constitution and state laws.
This will be the city’s last chance to reinstate the law after lower courts struck it down in 2022 and 2024.
The measure was passed in December 2021 and became law Jan. 9, 2022, after the newly sworn-in Mayor Eric Adams (D) declined to veto it. It granted legal residents, including “Dreamers” and green-card holders, who have lived in New York City for at least 30 consecutive days the right to vote in municipal elections.
The Republican National Committee, New York Republican State Committee, and a group of voters and elected officials filed a lawsuit against Adams, the New York City Council and the city’s board of elections Jan. 10. They alleged in their complaint that the new law violated the New York Constitution, state election law and Municipal Home Rule Law (MHRL). According to the plaintiffs, the state’s constitution and laws require voters of any election, including local ones, to be U.S. citizens. They also argued the MHRL requires a public referendum to change election methods.
The plaintiffs alleged that allowing over 800,000 eligible noncitizens to vote in elections in New York City — which has approximately 5 million registered voters — will dilute the votes of U.S. citizens by “dramatically increasing the pool of eligible voters.” The addition of noncitizens, who could potentially make up 15% of the electorate, would change the way candidates campaign for office and political parties support their candidates.
Adams and city council members defended the law, saying the plaintiffs relied on a narrow reading of a small portion of the state constitution. They argued the constitution as a whole, along with its legislative history, reflect a “more expansive vision of voting rights and municipal home rule powers over municipal elections.” Article IX, they said, grants localities broad rights to determine the selection process for local officers.
They also claimed the text of the state election law and past rulings interpreting it allow local laws to define “qualified voter” differently from the election law. Finally, they argued that the Noncitizen Voting Law was not among the types of law that require a referendum under the MHRL.
In June 2022, the trial court in Richmond County ruled the law unconstitutional, writing, “It is this Court’s belief that by not expressly including non-citizens in the New York State Constitution, it was the intent of the framers for non-citizens to be omitted” from voter privileges. After two more years of litigation, an intermediate appellate court agreed with the trial court’s ruling in a 3-1 decision that the law violated the state constitution and MHRL, but determined the law did not violate state election law.
Justice Lilllian Wan wrote a dissenting opinion in which she asserted the voter qualification provision of the state constitution only applied to state-wide affairs, not elections for local offices. She also wrote that increasing the size of the electorate does not change the method of conducting elections, and therefore does not require a referendum under MHRL.
“[T]he City’s government acted within the constraints of its constitutional and statutory authority in granting the right of suffrage to noncitizens legally residing in the City, affording them a political voice in the communities that they call home,” Wan’s opinion read.
Now, the case heads to the state’s highest court where seven judges will decide whether the law is valid.
Oral argument begins Feb. 11 at 2 p.m. EST and will be live streamed here.