Judge rules Mayor Adams broke law in blocking NYC jails solitary confinement ban
A New York State Supreme Court judge has ruled Mayor Adams broke the law when he refused to implement elements of a city law severely restricting the use of solitary confinement in the jails.
Local Law 42 was passed in December 2023, and the City Council overrode the mayor's subsequent veto in January 2024. Since then, Adams has used repeated executive orders to suspend parts of the law, citing public safety.
The Council then sued Dec. 9, arguing the mayor could not use emergency powers to override a decision by the city's duly elected legislature. On Monday, Judge Jeffrey Pearlman ruled in the Council's favor.
'When the City Council overturns a mayoral veto, it is not an emergency. It is a democratic process. By declaring a state of emergency and issuing emergency orders, the mayor violated that process,' wrote Pearlman.
Pearlman noted the Council passed Local Law 42 after years of hearings and debate including extensive input from the mayor and Department of Correction.
That input led to 'material changes' in the law's language.
'While the court respects the immense power that the state gives the executive, that [the Mayor] disagreed with the City Council on the passage of Local Law 42 cannot be considered an emergency of the sort imagined by the state Legislature.'
Pearlman wrote that he was referring to state Executive Law 24, which allows mayors to declare emergencies and use broad powers if 'public safety is imperiled.'
That law cites 'disaster, rioting, catastrophe, or similar public emergency' as reasons for issuing such an emergency order.
Adams first invoked emergency orders to suspend Local Law 42 on July 27, 2024, the date before the law went into effect.
Emergency Executive Order 624 stated the law 'severely limits the use of restrictive housing, de-escalation confinement, restraints in movement and emergency lock-ins' and therefore raises 'serious public safety concerns.'
Adams also argued the law 'conflicted' with court orders in the Nunez class action lawsuit which alleged the city failed to deal with violence and use of force in the jails. The case led to the creation of the federal monitor to recommend fixes. Mostly recently, the judge in the case ruled a manager will be appointed to take over some functions from city control. The monitor also cited unease with portions of the law.
In a Jan. 12 letter to the city, the monitor, Steve Martin, wrote the law 'could inadvertently undermine the overall goals of protecting individuals from harm.'
Adams has reissued the order every five days as required by state law.
The Council filed its Article 78 lawsuit Dec. 9 with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, alleging Adams' orders amounted to 'an undemocratic abuse of power that no previous New York City Mayor has even attempted.'
'Mayor Adams' decision to exceed his legal authority, simply because he was overruled, undermines the foundation of our democracy, and it must be invalidated,' Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said at the time.
Reps for Adams did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Judge voids Virginia Beach district-based election system, but not results
VIRGINIA BEACH — A Circuit Court judge ruled Monday that the district-based election system Virginia Beach imposed to comply with federal voting rights law is void. According to the ruling, that's because the General Assembly did not vote to pass corresponding legislation that would have officially changed the city's charter. Attorneys said Monday's summary judgement, means that the '10-1' system used in the past two local election cycles is not permitted unless and until the state legislature passes legislation that amends the city charter to that effect. However, the ruling applies only to future elections — the results of the previous two elections that used the 10-1 system are upheld. The next City Council elections are in the fall of 2026. Circuit Judge Randall D. Smith issued the ruling from the bench. Former council member Linwood Branch and other residents initially brought the suit last summer, saying the city had illegally removed the three at-large seats. 'We're very pleased with today's ruling,' said Brandan Goodwin, the attorney representing Branch and the other plaintiffs. 'We think the judge got it absolutely right when he found that City Council did not have the authority to abolish those at-large seats.' The City Council adopted an ordinance in 2023 instituting the '10-1' election system in conjunction with the city's 10-year redistricting measure, which meant that Virginia Beach residents across 10 districts vote for a City Council member only in the district they live in, plus the mayor. But the city's charter provides for a 7-3-1 system, where residents vote for a council member in one of seven districts where they reside, plus three at-large members and the mayor. The General Assembly passed legislation in 2021 that requires, in localities with district-based election residency requirements, for members to be elected by voters who live in the district and not by voters from the locality at large. But subsequent attempts to change the city's charter have failed. The city's position is that there are not redistricting maps to be drawn that result in seven districts and comply with the state and federal Voting Rights Act, and Virginia Beach will continue to defend the 10-1 system until voters say otherwise. 'The current reality is that all the council members are determined duly elected, so this only has impact on the future,' said Chris Boynton, Virginia Beach's deputy city attorney. '(The ruling) is a disappointment certainly, but it doesn't change the immediate reality, which is everybody's looking to the referendum to see where this goes next.' In the meantime, Virginia Beach voters will have the opportunity to weigh in on how their elections should be conducted in November. A referendum on the ballot will pose the question: 'Should the method of city council elections set forth in the Virginia Beach City Charter be changed from a modified 7-3-1 system to a 10-1 system?' If the answer is yes, the Virginia Beach City Council can ask the state legislature — again — to pass legislation that would modify the charter to reflect the change. Because Virginia is a Dillon Rule state, the city cannot by itself amend the charter. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has historically vetoed similar legislation, citing the ongoing litigation. The voting system shake up came after a federal judge ruled in 2021 that the city's at-large voting system violated the federal 1965 Voting Rights Act because it 'denies Hispanics, African Americans and Asians equal access to the electoral and political process.' With the referendum on the horizon, that judge has indicated he could reopen the case. Kate Seltzer, (757)713-7881
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
NYC Council passes $116B budget amid potential hits from Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill'
NEW YORK — The City Council approved the upcoming fiscal year's budget Monday in an unanimous vote, as the city faces funding threats and the likelihood of intensified immigration enforcement from President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill.' The election-year budget, at $115.9 billion, is the city's largest ever and was touted by councilmembers Monday as a way to 'Trump-proof' the city. 'This budget finally includes some things that we've been fighting for four years now, to make sure that New Yorkers are OK,' Speaker Adrienne Adams said at a press conference ahead of the vote. The NYC budget passage came as lawmakers in Washington, D.C., Monday debated Trump's proposed budget, which would increase spending on the president's immigration agenda, give tax breaks to wealthy households and corporations and make heavy cuts to health care and nutrition programs. 'We also made sure that, once again, we have been fiscally responsible to our communities, to our city, and making sure that we are Trump-proofing this city to the best of our ability,' Adams said. The city budget includes increased funding for immigration legal services, coming as Trump acts on his hard-line deportation agenda. 'On a day when Senate Republicans are passing a horrific budget bill that adds 10,000 ICE officers to the federal government, further criminalizing immigrants across America, we in New York City are protecting our immigrant communities," Councilmember Shekar Krishnan said at the meeting Monday afternoon. While budget negotiations hit a sticking point over programs for immigrant legal services, the budget allocates $74.7 million for immigration programs. Mayor Eric Adams and the Council have frequently been at odds during budget negotiations in years past. This year, coming in an election year as the mayor seeks a second term, went by more smoothly. Although the two sides of City Hall clashed on some topics, with legal services for recent immigrants a sticking point, the budget has added funding for many areas the mayor has cut in prior years, including libraries and child care. 'This is, in my opinion, the easiest budget we had to pass, because we knew what we expected from each other and what we needed to deliver, and we were able to accomplish that,' Adams said at the announcement of a handshake deal on the budget on Friday evening. Budget watchdogs have warned the city is overspending instead of setting aside money for the city's reserves to protect from potential headwinds out of Washington, D.C. 'Instead of putting aside $3 billion to soften the first blows of federal cuts and protect against a future recession, the budget increases spending more than twice the rate of inflation and leaves future budget gaps of more than $9 billion, after accounting for underbudgeted expenses,' Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew Rein said in a statement Friday. But Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan pointed out that the city's reserves are at a record-high $8.45 billion, and said that, because of the Trump administration's threats to further destabilize vulnerable populations, it made sense to allocate more money to them now. 'We made a conscious decision that right now it is more important to pour money into the communities that need most,' Brannan said. 'We can't run the city on reserves.' ______
New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Between Mamdani and Fetterman, flailing Democrats seek a populist agenda that works
Zohran Mamdani is the latest sign establishment Democrats don't know how to handle a populist challenge. They haven't learned anything from the defeats right-wing populism inflicted on them with President Donald Trump. Now they're knocked on their backsides by a new generation of left-wing populism in their own party. Advertisement Making Mamdani mayor of New York is like electing Bernie Sanders president — maybe even worse. But in an era when populism keeps gaining momentum, Democratic insiders habitually turn to political has-beens to rescue the party. First it was Hillary Clinton, who staved off Sanders only to lose to Trump. Advertisement Then it was Joe Biden, who got lucky in an election dominated by COVID lockdowns and George Floyd protests, even as Democrats knew he was far past his best-by date. So the setback Trump's right-of-center populism suffered in 2020 only set the stage for a comeback of historic proportions four years later. Democrats should have noticed their playbook wasn't working even back in 2021, when Terry McAuliffe, the ex-governor and old Clinton crony they trotted out to run for Virginia's top office, went crashing to defeat at the hands of Glenn Youngkin — a Republican who didn't have a populist background but spoke to popular fury at lockdowns and rising crime. Mamdani is the crudest kind of left-wing populist, offering outright socialism, including state-owned grocery stores, as his answer to New York's problems. Advertisement His medicine would in fact make things a lot worse, driving more high earners out of the city, in a second exodus after the one COVID triggered. A city already spending too much will have less revenue to pay for the even higher spending Mamdani wants, but that didn't register with Democratic primary voters last week. What they saw and heard was a young, handsome Mamdani telling them more free stuff could be theirs — all they had to do was end Andrew Cuomo's political career. Advertisement Cuomo didn't take Mamdani's challenge seriously enough — but then, top Democrats didn't take voters seriously enough when they got behind Cuomo in the first place. He was damaged goods as well as yesterday's news, a man who'd left the governor's mansion in disgrace four years ago. At a time when all the old idols are falling, did hauling this one out of the dumpster really seem like a bright idea? The party establishment might as well have run Anthony Weiner — and in fact, he was on the ballot last week too, seeking a City Council seat. He came in fourth. MAGA populism, unlike Mamdani's, doesn't spring from thinking there shouldn't be billionaires. On the right, populism is about getting rid of barriers to middle- and working-class prosperity, by bringing jobs back to America and eliminating taxes on tips, for example. And the right's populism is cultural as well as economic, emphasizing common sense, the rejection of woke ideology and patriotism. In a clash between rival populisms, the conservative kind prevails against what Mamdani and Bernie Sanders represent — in most places. Advertisement But New York is a blue city where Democratic loyalties run deep, and now that Mamdani is the party's nominee, stopping him in the general election will take everything that non-socialist Democrats, independents and Republicans together can muster. The only way center-left Democrats will avoid this kind of debacle in the future is if they end their recycling program for Clintons, Bidens, Cuomos and Weiners and figure out what a mainstream Democratic populism in the 21st century might look like. Democrats need a populism with less socialism and more patriotism, even if that looks a little more like the GOP's formula — after all, it's what works. Advertisement The party of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy used to know how to compete with Republicans for voters who were proud of being Americans, before identity politics and the Davos mindset took over the party's elites. But today the few Democrats who point their party back in the direction of Middle America are shunned for doing so: Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, for one. The party that made excuses for Joe Biden up to the minute he was humiliated on national TV has been lately seeding the press with claims Fetterman isn't mentally fit for office. His fitness wasn't an issue when he was elected in 2022 — Democrats stood by him despite the stroke he suffered that May. Advertisement But that was before he started to buck party orthodoxy. Late last month, Susquehanna polling found Fetterman doing better with Republicans than Democrats in his home state, with 45% approval from GOP voters versus just 40% from his own party's. Democrats are shooting the messenger. Advertisement Without a populist message that isn't as far-left as Mamdani's, they're doomed to defeat in the country — and doomed to victories in blue cities that may hurt them even more. Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.
