From the NYT:

Democrats across the nation have spent years railing against partisan gerrymandering, particularly in Republican states — most recently trying to pass federal voting rights legislation in Washington to all but outlaw the practice.

But given the same opportunity for the first time in decades, Democratic lawmakers in New York adopted on Wednesday an aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional districts that positions the party to flip three seats in the House this year, a greater shift than projected in any other state….

Legal and political experts immediately criticized the new district contours as a blatant and hypocritical partisan gerrymander. And Republicans, who were powerless to stop it legislatively in Albany, threated to challenge the map in court under new anti-gerrymandering provisions in New York’s Constitution.

“It’s a master class in how to draw an effective gerrymander,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has also sounded alarms about attempts by Republicans to gerrymander and pass other restrictive voting laws.

“Sometimes you do need fancy metrics to tell, but a map that gives Democrats 85 percent of the seats in a state that is not 85 percent Democratic — this is not a particularly hard case,” he said….

Any court case would likely hinge on how judges interpret language included in the same 2014 constitutional amendment that created the defunct redistricting commission. The language has not previously been tested in court and says that districts “shall not be drawn to discourage competition” or boost one party or incumbent candidate over another….

Republicans were not the only group alarmed by the new maps. The process has infuriated good-governance groups that had pleaded with Democratic Party leaders to hold hearings.

And an influential coalition of groups that advocate for Black, Latino and Asian New Yorkers, known as the UNITY Map Coalition, accused mapmakers of “haphazardly” dividing Black and brown voters while ignoring the priorities of those communities.

“Many of the districts are contorted in incoherent ways that are not necessary, breaking apart communities and disenfranchising voters,” they wrote.