By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) -New York State’s top court on Thursday struck down a New York City law that would have permitted more than 800,000 legal non-citizens to vote in municipal elections.
In a 6-1 decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that the law, passed by the City Council in 2021, violates the state constitution.
“Americans have fought over the meaning of citizenship and the right to vote since the earliest days of our Republic,” Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote for the majority. “Whatever the future may bring, the New York Constitution as it stands today draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens.”
New York’s law would have allowed permanent legal residents and other legally documented non-citizens, such as those with work authorization, who had lived in the city for at least 30 days to cast ballots in municipal contests. Non-citizens would still have been barred from voting in state or federal elections.
The law had been blocked from taking effect by lower court rulings, after state Republicans challenged its constitutionality.
More than a dozen U.S. cities and towns, including San Francisco and Washington, D.C., allow non-citizens to vote in some local elections.
Several Republican-controlled states have passed laws in recent years affirming that non-citizens cannot vote, prompted by President Donald Trump’s false claims that millions of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally in U.S. elections.
(Reporting by Joseph AxEditing by Marguerita Choy)
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