The Town of Newburgh Council voted on Monday, February 23 to settle the town’s legal case challenging the New York Voting Rights Act. The settlement will see the town change to a ranked choice voting system for future elections and pay out no more than $1.6 million total to defendants.
The case, known as Clarke V. Town of Newburgh, began in 2024 when six Town of Newburgh residents sued the town, asserting that the town’s at-large council system violated the NYVRA’s clause on vote dilution. The act prohibits vote dilution by using an at-large method of voting when that voting method would prevent members of a racial or language minority group from influencing the outcome of elections.
The plaintiffs argued that the town’s at-large voting system diluted the voting power of Black and Hispanic residents. They asserted that despite the town being about 15% Black and 25% Hispanic, those groups were unable to elect candidates of their choice to the Town Council due to the at-large voting system.
The town argued that the NYVRA was unconstitutional because if the town lost this trial and complied with the law, it would be forced to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Because of this, the question of whether or not the NYVRA was constitutional became the main issue in the case.
In November of 2024, the Orange County Supreme Court ruled in the town’s favor, ruling that the NYVRA was unconstitutional because it required differential treatment based on race.
The court of appeals reversed this decision in January of 2025, deciding that the town failed to show that complying with the NYVRA would require them to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
In November of 2025, the New York State Supreme Court upheld the ruling against the town, similarly ruling that because the town had not shown that it would be forced to violate the Equal Protection Clause by complying with the NYVRA, it did not have standing to sue to invalidate state legislation.
After this decision, the trial continued, focused not on the question of the constitutionality of the NYVRA, but on whether there was in fact vote dilution occuring. The case was scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday, February 24, before the settlement was decided.