New York’s highest court struck down New York City’s noncitizen voting law as unconstitutional on Thursday.
The New York State Court of Appeals ruled 6-1 that the 2021 law violates the state Constitution, finding that “Article II, section 1 of New York’s Constitution limits voting to citizens” and calling that “conclusion … hardly new.”
“Whatever the future may bring, the New York Constitution as it stands today draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens,” the court held, further ruling that the appellants “fundamentally misunderstood” several historical statutes they cited in trying to make their case.
“It takes but a moment to understand,” the court reasoned, that these historical statutes were not intended to “enfranchise noncitizens.”
The law was previously struck down last February by the Second Judicial Department in the appellate division of the state Supreme Court, with Justice Paul Wooten finding the law was “in violation of the New York State Constitution and Municipal Home Rule Law.” That decision upheld a previous decision by a lower court.
The law would have allowed up to 800,000 noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, and as previously noted in the ruling from the Second Judicial Department, “noncitizens could potentially make up 15% or more of the electorate in future elections … which is greater than the margin of victory in many municipal elections.”
Noncitizens would have been permitted to cast a ballot in the race for mayor, council member, borough president, comptroller, and public advocate. Any noncitizen who was (1) a “lawful permanent resident or authorized to work in the United States,” (2) had been living in the Big Apple for at least 30 consecutive days by the time of the election, and (3) satisfied “all qualifications for registering or pre-registering to vote under the election law, except for possessing United States citizenship” would have been eligible to vote under the law.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation challenged the law, alleging that it violated the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged … on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley called the decision a “HUGE Election Integrity victory” in a post on X.
“When New York City Democrats tried to add more than 800,000 non-citizens to their voter rolls, the RNC sued to stop them.”
“Today, after fighting for more than three years, the state’s highest court ruled in our favor, upholding the citizenship requirement to vote,” Whatley said in his post.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
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