The state’s highest court is upholding a nearly one-year-old law that grants all eligible New Yorkers the right to vote by mail.
Tuesday’s decision rejected a Republican-led lawsuit that claimed the law was unconstitutional. It marks the first time the state Court of Appeals was forced to determine whether the language of the state constitution mandated in-person voting. Ultimately, all but one member of the Court of Appeals rejected that claim.
“Our task is to rigorously analyze the constitutional text and history to determine if New York’s Early Mail Voter Act is unconstitutional,” Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote for the majority in the 6-to-1 opinion. “We now hold that it is not.”
A contentious party-line legal battle over the legislation began immediately after Gov. Kathy Hochul signed it into law last September, along with a suite of other voting rights legislation. The same day, Rep. Elise Stefanik and other Republican lawmakers filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court, arguing the new statute was unconstitutional.
Two lower courts rejected that claim, and the state’s Court of Appeals joined them on Tuesday. The decision means that any eligible voter who wants to vote by mail can apply for a mail ballot for any election, even if they wouldn’t meet the requirements of the state’s absentee ballot provision.
Under that provision, voters applying for absentee ballots must state that they can’t go to the polls because they’ll be away from home on Election Day, are disabled or caring for someone who is, reside in a veterans hospital, are awaiting trial in jail, or are in prison for a non-felony sentence.
Reactions to the court’s ruling reflected the partisan split.
Democratic state Attorney General Letitia James, whose office defended the law in court, issued a statement hailing the decision as an example of how her office was protecting voting rights, while taking aim at Republican opponents who she said sought to thwart them.
“While some want to put up roadblocks and stifle New Yorkers’ ability to exercise their constitutional right to vote, I will always stand up and protect this basic yet essential freedom,” James said in a statement.
Stefanik, the Republican who sued to strike down the law, blasted the decision and the court itself for rejecting the claim that the state constitution has historically required “in-person” voting.
“New York’s court system is so corrupt and disgraceful that today’s ruling has essentially declared that for over 150 years, New York’s elected officials, voters, and judges misunderstood their own state’s constitution, and that in-person voting was never required outside the current legal absentee process,” Stefanik said.
She argued that an electoral landslide for Republicans to “rid ourselves of New York’s politically corrupt Democrats” was the only solution to “save New York.”