How can you not call this law something that undermines the Constitution
New York State's highest court ruled that a New York City law that allowed noncitizens, including many illegal aliens, the right to vote in local elections violated the state's constitution. When the law was adopted in December 2021, an estimated 800,000 citizens of other countries would have...
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New York City’s Noncitizen Voting Law Struck Down by the State’s Highest Court
Six out of the seven judges on the New York State Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) can read plain English, even if a majority of the members of the New York City Council struggles to do so. Last Thursday, the
Appeals Court ruled that a law approved by the City Council in December 2021 violates New York State’s Constitution. That law, called
Local Law 11, would have granted noncitizens (including many illegal aliens) the right to vote in city elections.
Article II, Section 1, of the State Constitution plainly establishes the qualifications for voting anywhere in the state. “Every
citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city, or village for thirty days next preceding an election.” (Emphasis added.)
When New York City adopted Local Law 11, an estimated
800,000 noncitizens would have been qualified to vote in elections for “Mayor, Public Advocate, Comptroller, Borough President and City Council Member.” Considering that the total number of votes cast in the last mayoral election was
about 1,150,000, the addition of even a small portion of those noncitizens to the voter rolls could have a profound effect on the outcome of elections. These noncitizens included green card holders and those who are “authorized to work in the United States” so long as they met “all qualifications…except for possessing United States citizenship.”
Many illegal aliens are authorized to work in the United States, particularly after the Biden administration’s profligate exercise of parole authority and Temporary Protected Status designations. Thus, within a month of stepping off a bus at the Port Authority terminal at the height of New York City’s migrant crisis, illegal aliens with employment authorization cards would have had an equal say in local affairs as citizens.
Since neither former Mayor Bill DeBlasio (who was in his final days in office when Local Law 11 was passed), nor Eric Adams, who assumed office on Jan. 1, 2022, signed or vetoed the bill, it automatically took effect on Jan. 9, 2022. The law was
immediately challenged by a coalition of plaintiffs led by Staten Island Borough President, Vito Fossella.
In June 2022, State Judge Ralph Porzio
ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and issued a permanent injunction prohibiting New York City from registering noncitizens to vote. That
ruling was appealed by Mayor Adams and the City Council. In February 2024, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court
upheld Judge Porzio’s ruling. The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), FAIR’s legal affiliate, filed legal briefs in support of the plaintiffs in both Judge Porzio’s court and before the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court.
The matter was finally put to rest last week by the New York State Court of Appeals in
a 6-1 ruling. New York’s highest court firmly rejected New York City’s argument that the State Constitution leaves room for local jurisdictions to expand the grounds for voter eligibility.
Attorneys representing the city argued that noncitizens should be enfranchised because they “pay billions in taxes and yet have no say in local policies on public safety, garbage collection, or housing — all matters that affect their day-to-day lives.”
Writing for the court majority, Chief Judge Rowan Wilson made it clear that New York City cannot circumvent the State Constitution’s citizenship requirement. “It is plain from the language and restrictions contained in [the state constitution] that ‘citizen’ is not meant as a floor, but as a condition of voter eligibility: the franchise extends only to citizens whose right to vote is established by proper proofs,”
he wrote.
The judicial decision barring noncitizens from voting in the nation’s largest city represents an important victory in protecting integrity of U.S. citizenship and the exclusive right of American citizens to chart their own courses. That exclusive right of citizenship is one that voters across the country affirmed last November. Constitutional amendments explicitly barring noncitizen voting were on the ballot in eight states and all were
approved overwhelmingly by the citizens who turned out to vote.
However, in some jurisdictions in California, Maryland, Vermont and the District of Columbia, where constitutional prohibitions do not exist or are not as explicit as they are in New York, noncitizens already have been
granted voting privileges. And, as the ideological battles over immigration and voting rights intensify, further efforts enfranchise noncitizens will likely continue.