Defending New Yorkers’ Ability to Use the New York Voting Rights Act to Challenge Discrimination in Voting (Clarke v. Town of Newburgh)

The Town of Newburgh utilizes an at-large voting system to elect members to the Newburgh Town Board. This at-large system denies Hispanic and Black voters an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice to the town board.  

In 2024, six Black and Hispanic voters, represented by the Harvard Election Law Clinic and Abrams Fensterman, LLP, filed a lawsuit challenging the town’s discriminatory at-large voting system under the New York Voting Rights Act (NYVRA).  

Enacted in 2022, the NYVRA protects historically disenfranchised communities from attacks on their freedom to vote by preventing discriminatory voting laws from being enacted; providing new, legal tools for fighting voting discrimination in court; and instructing state judges to interpret laws in a pro-voter manner wherever possible.

In its response to the lawsuit, the Town raised the defense that the NYVRA violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the New York Constitution. The trial judge later issued a ruling invalidating the NYVRA as unconstitutional.

That ruling was swiftly overturned on appeal. The intermediate appellate court upheld the NYVRA as constitutional, consistent with every other state appellate and federal court to review state Voting Rights Acts (state VRAs).

The Town of Newburgh has now appealed to the state’s highest court, again arguing the NYVRA violates the federal and state constitutions. CLC filed an amicus brief in the New York Court of Appeals arguing that, like other state VRAs that have been consistently upheld, the NYVRA is a constitutionally valid anti-discrimination statute designed to confront and remedy modern forms of discrimination in voting.  

CLC filed similar briefs in support of the NYVRA in the trial and intermediate appellate courts.