New York’s highest court ruled that a 2021 local law that allowed some legal permanent residents to vote in New York City elections is unconstitutional, in a decision released Thursday.
The 6-1 decision by the New York State Court of Appeals striking down the controversial law is a setback to efforts to expand immigrant rights in the city. And it comes as the state gears up for a showdown with the Trump administration over other laws benefiting noncitizens, including a state law that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.
“Whatever the future may bring, the New York Constitution as it stands today draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens,” Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the majority opinion. Associate Judge Jenny Rivera, the sole dissenter, argued that New York City had the right to act under home rule.
The decision ends a four-year fight to determine who has the right to vote in the city’s municipal elections. New York City has an estimated 800,000 green card and work permit holders and other legal permanent residents who would have been eligible under the law.
“The highest court in New York State has spoken. We respect the court’s ruling,” said city law department spokesperson Nicholas Paolucci.
‘Get Out of the Way’
Local Law 11, sponsored by then-Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, now the city transportation commissioner, granted people with green cards, work permits and DACA status the right to vote in municipal elections. It passed in November 2021 over the objections of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio with a 33-to-14 vote, just short of a veto-proof majority in the Council. De Blasio left office weeks later and Mayor Eric Adams allowed the measure to lapse into law in the first days of his term.
The day after the law took effect in January 2022, local Republican elected officials led by Staten Island Borough Vito Fossella, along with the Republican National Committee and the Republican State Committee, filed a lawsuit arguing the law was unconstitutional and that the 30-day residency requirement in order to register to vote was too short.
Spokespersons for Fossella and the RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other city Republicans praised the Court of Appeals decision striking down the law. GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa said the law did little to bring disenfranchised U.S. citizens to the polls, and urged local lawmakers to address the issue of low voter participation first.
“With one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country, our city needs to do more to engage working people who feel shut out of the process,” Sliwa said in a statement. “Before expanding voting rights to noncitizens, we should focus on ensuring that more New Yorkers feel their voices matter.”
The decision comes as other legislative efforts to expand immigrants’ rights in New York are under assault — in tandem with a push to force the state to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
Last week, Trump administration “border czar” Tom Homan met with Republican state lawmakers to discuss revoking the state’s 2019 Green Light Law, which allows noncitizens to obtain driver’s licenses and restricts federal government access to personal information.
Homan and state Republicans also discussed the state’s proposed Laken Riley Act. Following the federal law passed earlier this year requiring detention of immigrants charged with certain crimes, it would require state law enforcement to report to federal immigration authorities when they arrest a noncitizen crime suspect.
“You’re not gonna stop us, New York State,” Homan said in a press conference flanked by state Republicans in the state Capitol a week ago. “If you don’t get out of the way, we’re going to do our job.”
Republicans in Congress are attempting to crack down on noncitizen voting, which is illegal in all 50 states and accounts for a small fraction of the small number of ballots improperly cast in federal elections.
Already, several states have already passed their own versions of a U.S. House bill, known as the SAVE Act, which requires voters to show proof of citizenship documents at the polls, including their birth certificates. They have led to some unintended consequences.
In local elections in New Hampshire last week, married women who changed their last names had a difficult time casting their ballots because their IDs did not match the name on their birth certificates as newly required by state law. One woman told a local NPR affiliate it took her three attempts to cast her ballot in her town elections last Tuesday.
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