NYC appealing judge’s ruling that prohibits non-citizens from voting

Although the "Our Metropolis, Our Vote" invoice handed final yr, a decide had dominated in opposition to it in June.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photographs

New York Metropolis’s left-leaning leaders are taking one other swing at attempting to legalize voting for non-citizens in native elections.

Town Regulation Division filed authorized papers Friday in Staten Island Supreme Court docket, saying it’ll enchantment Justice Ralph Porzio’s everlasting injunction final month barring town Board of Elections from letting about 800,000 non-citizen residents register to vote. The papers had been filed on behalf of Mayor Eric Adams, the BOE and the Democratic-controlled Metropolis Council.

The council overwhelming handed the “Our Metropolis, Our Vote” invoice in December, paving the best way for the Massive Apple’s green-card holders and residents with work visas — about 10% of town’s inhabitants — to vote in native elections however not state or nationwide races.

Then-Mayor Invoice de Blasio declined to signal or veto the invoice, and his successor Adams — who mentioned he supported the measure regardless of preliminary “considerations” — allowed it to develop into regulation shortly after taking workplace in January by failing to take any motion inside 30 days of the invoice’s passage.

A gaggle of New York Republicans led by Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella then filed a lawsuit to dam the brand new regulation from being applied.

In his 13-page ruling, Porzio mentioned metropolis officers can’t “obviate” restrictions within the state structure, which “expressly states that solely residents assembly the age and residency necessities are entitled to register and vote in elections.”