The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Republican representative from New York challenging a congressional redistricting effort in a decision she said “helps restore the public’s confidence in our judicial system.” 

Over the dissent of the court’s three liberal justices, the conservative majority halted a state court ruling that had ordered New York’s redistricting commission to redraw the district held by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., that covers Staten Island and a small piece of Brooklyn. A judge had ruled that the district was drawn in a way that dilutes the power of its Black and Hispanic voters and had instructed the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to complete a new map. 

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to keep New York’s 11th Congressional District intact helps restore the public’s confidence in our judicial system and proves the challenge to our district lines was always meritless. The plaintiffs in this case attempted to manipulate our state’s courts to use race as a weapon to rig our elections,” Malliotakis said in a statement. “That was wrong and, as demonstrated by today’s ruling, clearly unconstitutional.” 

“Unfortunately, the politicization of New York’s courts and its judges necessitated action from the nation’s highest court. I thank the Justices who stopped the voters on Staten Island and in Southern Brooklyn from being stripped of their ability to elect a representative who reflects their values,” she added. “Whether I serve another term in Congress is a decision for the voters, not Democrat party bosses and their high-priced lawyers.”

In October 2025, New York voters sued state election officials in the Supreme Court of New York, the state’s trial court, to challenge the district’s lines. Malliotakis intervened to defend the current map. 

A law firm affiliated with Democrats had argued that the Staten Island district should be reshaped by cutting out the small section in Brooklyn and replacing it with a chunk of Lower Manhattan. The swap would have taken some Republican-leaning neighborhoods out of the district and replaced them with areas where President Donald Trump lost to former Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 50 points in 2024. 

FEDERAL COURT REFUSES TO BLOCK NEW UTAH CONGRESSIONAL VOTING MAP THAT MAY FAVOR DEMOCRATS

While a state judge declined to impose the map they requested, he ruled a change was needed to give more voting power to the growing population of Black and Hispanic residents on Staten Island. 

The judge left the decision on how to redraw the state’s congressional maps to New York’s bipartisan redistricting commission, which had yet to produce any proposals.

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The Supreme Court did not explain the rationale for its decision Monday, but Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the judge’s ruling under New York’s constitution amounted to “unadorned racial discrimination” in violation of the U.S. Constitution, according to The Associated Press. 

Fox News’ Bill Mears, Shannon Bream, Maria Paronich and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Related Article

But the story of the Poor Clares’ monastery — or as it’s known on the books of the Boston Planning Department, 920 Centre Street — is, at least for now, a case study on how housing doesn’t get built in this city.

It’s a story about how one midsized project with everything going for it — a world-class architect, a brilliant landscape designer, and a developer willing to make one compromise after another to the size and layout of the plan — still can’t move the needle in the face of one powerful opponent.

Well, make that one powerful opponent who has the ear of City Hall.

Faced with dwindling numbers in their order (they were down to 10 in 2022) and a Vatican mandate to consolidate, the sisters decided to sell their 2.8-acre parcel and the aging monastery building to developer John Holland. The building, which they had occupied since 1934, was expensive to heat and in need of extensive repairs.

They relocated to Westwood in 2023, hoping to expand those quarters to accommodate another 10 nuns from around the country as soon as the sale of the Jamaica Plain property became final, contingent on the approval of its redevelopment.

They’re still waiting.

The former monastery is neighbor to the Arnold Arboretum, land owned by the city but under a renewable 1,000-year lease to Harvard University. And no question, the 281-acre parcel is a tree-filled treasure for researchers and picnickers alike. Just try getting near the place on Lilac Sunday.

But the Arboretum, or rather its director, William Friedman, a Harvard evolutionary biology professor, has emerged as a powerful foe.

“The development has been part of the city’s planning process for nearly five years and has undergone several revisions,” Sr. Mary Veronica McGuff, the order’s abbess, wrote in a letter to Mayor Michelle Wu in January and shared with the editorial board. “We are very disappointed to learn that the main obstacle is … the Arnold Arboretum.”

She revealed that the order had earlier offered to sell the property to the Arboretum, but was rebuffed.

“It’s upsetting that our progress is now being hindered by an institution that declined the opportunity to take stewardship of the land and is now making unreasonable demands for its redevelopment,” she said in the letter.

In fact, its market rate condo component, once slated to be five stories high, has been reduced to four stories. Those 38 senior rental units planned for the monastery building will include 25 affordable units.

Project architect David Hacin, winner of the Boston Preservation Alliance’s 2022 President’s Award for Excellence, is equally bewildered.

“I don’t understand how a project that is so good on so many levels is being held up for years, literally, over asks that seem, to me, completely unreasonable,” Hacin told Globe business reporter Catherine Carlock. “If we can’t build five-story buildings, how are we going to solve the housing crisis?”

How indeed.

The developers have done shadow studies, a sunlight analysis, and tree root studies to convince Arboretum officials that the planned housing would do no damage to the magnolia tree roots on the perimeter of Harvard’s grounds, which seem to be their main bone of contention.

The project’s landscape architect Mikyoung Kim has surely not acquired her international reputation for “ecological restoration” by murdering magnolia trees.

Friedman has met with Boston’s planning chief, Kairos Shen, but as of Thursday the sisters have not yet been granted a similar opportunity. Nor have they heard from either Wu or Shen (who was copied in on the Jan. 12 letter) since they made their appeal for help “in finding a solution that allows this project to move forward and for our community to finally settle into our new home.”

In a statement to the Globe editorial board, Wu said, “Large properties like 920 Centre Street are significant housing sites for Boston, and we are working actively with all parties to advance a plan that would deliver homes our city needs.”

For the past year, experts have been warning that the slumping number of building permits in Greater Boston — down 44 percent last year from four years ago — do not bode well for an increase in the future housing supply. That dearth in supply is driving up prices and rents.

And while the Wu administration is quick to blame President Trump’s tariffs and rising costs for the construction slump, it fails to look in the mirror. Enabling the kind of Not In My Back Yard obstructionism that is keeping a good project on the drawing boards for years will never get Boston the kind of housing it needs to keep pace with demand and allow this city to thrive.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.