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Reuters – Several dozen lawyers and scores of voters and political officials will appear in Brooklyn federal court on Monday to offer suggestions on how to redraw New York state’s political map.

The conference was scheduled last week after a judge denied a bid to dismiss a lawsuit brought by voters and community leaders, who had asked the court to intervene in the redistricting process.

“It’s going to be a circus,” said Juan Cartagena, an attorney at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, who represents a group of Latino voters involved the case.

New York, like other states, must redo its political maps in light of population shifts identified in the 2010 census.

In November, the plaintiffs in the case, Favors v. Cuomo, filed suit, seeking to put the congressional redistricting plan in the court’s hands. They argued that the legislature’s inability to agree on its own plan “threaten(ed) to throw the state’s 2012 elections into a quagmire absent court intervention.”

In a decision issued earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn gave a three-judge panel authority to appoint a special master to draw up new congressional districts if the legislative stalemate over redistricting continues.

The plaintiffs will be joined at Monday’s conference by four groups of intervenors, three of which represent minority communities who claim they could be disenfranchised by an unfair redistricting plan. A fourth group represents voters living in an “overpopulated” congressional district, where the population exceeds that in other districts, resulting in a diluted vote.

The defendants include Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Senate Republicans, Assembly leaders and members of the New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR), which is tasked with redrawing districts every decade.

New York Senate Minority Leader John Sampson and Senator Marin Dilan, a Democrat from Brooklyn who is being sued as a member of LATFOR, also are parties to the suit. Although named as defendants, they joined in the plaintiffs’ request to appoint a special master, citing the “impasse” that has delayed a deal in Albany.

The ongoing debate in Albany will loom large during the court proceedings. If New York’s legislature and governor can compromise and approve a redistricting plan in the near future, the court may have to defer to that agreement, under a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Perry v. Perez, which involved a court-drawn redistricting plan in Texas.

But even if Albany approves a plan, it must still be vetted by the U.S. Department of Justice, a process that can take up to 60 days.

The judges hearing the case on Monday include Irizarry, the judge to whom the case was originally assigned, and Judges Reena Raggi and Gerard Lynch, from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann will solicit input from experts and ultimately supervise the redistricting process.

The process, which takes place every ten years, redraws the borders of the state’s congressional districts, which will shrink from 29 to 27 as a result of the census. It also will create new state Senate and Assembly districts.

The case is Favors et al. v. Cuomo, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, No. 11-5632.

For the Favors plaintiffs: Dan Burstein, Jeffrey Williams and Richard Mancino of Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

For the Drayton intervenors (African-American voters): Joan Gibbs and Esmeralda Simmons of the Center for Law and Social Justice, Medgar Evers College, City University of New York.

For the Lee intervenors (Asian-American voters): Glenn Magpantay and Kenneth Kimerling of the Asian American Legal Defense Fund; Grace Yang of Kaye Scholer; and James Herschelin and Noah Peters of Kaye Scholer.

For the Ramos intervenors (Latino voters): Juan Cartagena, Jackson Chin and Jose Luis Perez of LatinoJustice PRLDEF.

For the Rose intervenors (overpopulated district voters): Marc Elias, Jeffrey Vanacore, John Devaney and Kevin Hamilton of Perkins Coie.

For Cuomo and New York Senate President Robert Duffy: Joshua Pepper, Office of the Attorney General.

For New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos: Michael Carvin and Todd Geremia of Jones Day; David Lewis of Lewis & Fiore.

For Speaker of the New York Assembly Sheldon Silver and LATFOR members John McEneny and Roman Hedges: C. Daniel Chill of Graubard Miller.

For Sampson and Dilan: Alexander Goldenberg, John Cuti, Julie Ehrlich of Cuti Hecker Wang; Eric Hecker of Cuti Hecker Wang; Leonard Kohen.

For New York Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb: Kevin Lang, Donald Hillmann and Jennifer Harvey of Couch White.

For LATFOR member Robert Oaks: Jonathan Sinnreich, Vincent Messina and Timothy Hill of Sinnreich Kosakoff & Messina; Kevin Lang of Couch White.

By Jessica Dye

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