Fonseca-Sabune identifies her full title as Chief Democracy Officer for De-
mocracy NYC in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York.
878 65 MISCELLANEOUS REPORTS, 3d SERIES
ing the MOIA program providing language assistance is
preempted by the Election Law.
The City defendants’ motion is granted to the extent that it
is declared that the interpreter program intended to expand
the availability of interpretation services to voters with limited
English proficiency (LEP) currently operated jointly by MOIA
and the Chief Democracy Officer of the City of New York, along
with the City Council budget resolutions funding the inter-
preter program, do not violate NY Constitution, article II, § 8
and are not preempted by the Election Law or the federal Vot-
ing Rights Act of 1965. The Board’s cross motion is denied.
Factual and Procedural Background
For the last several years, the Board, in response to require-
ments of the federal Voting Rights Act, federal regulations,
various judgments against it and consent decrees entered into
by it, has provided language assistance for LEP voters in Span-
ish, Chinese (in Cantonese and Mandarin), Korean and Bengali
in the form of written materials and the provision of interpret-
ers, bilingual election inspectors, and poll clerks at certain
targeted polling sites. In 2016, in order to address the signifi-
cant number of naturalized citizens in the City with limited
English language proficiency whose primary language is not
covered by the Board’s language assistance programs, MOIA
and the New York City Campaign Finance Board partnered to
provide voter registration forms in 11 additional languages.2 In
November 2017, MOIA expanded on this program relating to
registration forms with a pilot interpreter program providing