Victories for common sense and the rule of law are all too rare at Albany, where Democrats dominate. All the more reason to applaud today’s ruling by New York’s top court against non-citizen voting. New York City Democrats had sought to allow “lawful permanent residents” to vote in municipal elections. The high court, based on what seems like a clear-eyed reading of the state charter, finds the state “Constitution limits voting to citizens.”

The ruling hands a win to the Republican party officials who brought suit against the law — so the measure’s defeat by the Court of Appeals is, at least nominally, a defeat for the Democrats. Yet these columns have marked how non-citizen voting could have proven to be less of a boon than anticipated for Democrats. That’s because of the trend — exemplified in the November election — that has seen minorities flee the Democratic party for the GOP.

“Be careful for what you wish,” the Sun warned in 2021 when “the noble comrades” of the City Council sought to legalize non-citizen votes. With a potential addition to the  electoral rolls of up to 800,000, “it was as brazen a ploy for votes as it gets.” Yet since then, the demographic and political certainties regarding immigrants have gotten scrambled. The 2024 elections confirmed a trend of this once seemingly reliable demographic abandoning the Democrats.

“Our best guess is that immigrants went from being a Biden plus-27 group in 2020 to a group that Trump narrowly won in 2024,” political data analyst David Shor observes the other day on Ezra Klein’s podcast. That astonishing shift is ringing alarm bells within the Democratic party, and not just in New York State. The AP’s Matt Brown is reporting an “identity crisis” within the party, which had seen immigrant and minority voters as key to its future.

Joining this chorus of concern is journalist John Judis, who in 2002 wrote a book titled “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” He then foresaw demographic changes in America, fueled by unchecked immigration, forging a permanent electoral tilt toward the Democrats. Women, educated professionals, and minorities were key to Mr. Judis’s prediction. Wouldn’t you know it, but now Mr. Judis is writing of an “Emerging Democratic Minority.”

This reversal of fortune, per Mr. Judis, is partly the result of losing working-class voters now that the Democrats are “identified with radical stances on sex and gender,” plus “a lax attitude toward asylum,” along with “a rejection of equality in favor of ‘equity,’” and an animus to police. This turn is partly why Mr. Klein says the Democrats “lost a huge amount of support among Hispanic voters and a significant amount among Asian voters.”

It’s enough to make a cynic wonder whether New York’s top tribunal —  often a rubber stamp when it comes to left-wing causes — was trying to do the Democrats a favor by blocking the non-citizen voting law. It’s hard, after all, to deny the clarity of the constitution’s limit to “citizens” the “right of suffrage.” It notes that every “citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election” and on “all questions submitted to the vote of the people.” 

The Constitution, too, directs lawmakers to determine, “by proper proofs, the citizens who shall be entitled to the right of suffrage hereby established.” To that end, state law forbids anyone “to register for and vote at any election unless he is a citizen of the United States.” The berobed sages also resisted any temptation to use the latest affront to New York’s constitution, the so-called Equal Rights Amendment, to extend suffrage to non-citizens.

At a time when non-citizens’ rights, privileges, and immunities are being weighed in the federal courts, it’s nice to see a state court take seriously the state Constitution’s plain language. Chief Judge Rowan Wilson declares: “Whatever the future may bring, the New York Constitution as it stands today draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens.” His forward-looking language signals that the non-citizen voting debate is far from settled in the political arena.