Senate Republicans want the state’s highest court to hear their challenge to a 2010 law mandating state prison inmates be counted at their last known addresses for purposes of legislative redistricting.
A group of plaintiffs led by Sen. Betty Little, R-Queensbury, filed a pre-appeal statement Tuesday before the Court of Appeals, continuing to claim the law — passed by all Democrats — creates “is in conflict with the [constitutional] command that the Census is controlling by creating a lesser inclusive Census for reapportionment.”
Republicans say the law would completely exclude prisoners who do not give a valid address, and therefore “prevents the actual enumeration of all the inhabitants required to be counted by the process of of reapportionment,” according to the statement.
Prisoners have hitherto been counted in their jail cells during the once-a-decade process of redistricting, which is run by LATFOR, a task force controlled by Republicans who control the Senate and Democrats who dominate the Assembly.
Civil rights groups contend this process inflates the political clout of communities containing prisoners — generally rural, majority-white, upstate areas that elect Republicans — at the expense of inmates’ home communities, which are generally more racially diverse urban areas downstate that generally elect Democrats.
