Zohran Mamdani went to court to stop New York City from sending school aides checks of up to $10,000. The teachers union that endorsed him for mayor joined the case on the other side. On Tuesday, the City Council asked a Manhattan judge to throw out his lawsuit.
The Council voted 49–0 in July to pass the RESPECT Check Act. Mamdani, who backed a similar measure on the campaign trail, let it become law without signing it. The plan calls for four installments from January through August 2027, at an estimated cost of $325 million.
There was room for ambiguity while the bill sat unsigned. City Hall removed any doubt when it sued. The administration says the Taylor Law puts pay at the bargaining table, and in an October filing, city attorney Steve Banks took particular exception to the Council calling the checks workforce stabilization payments.
“No amount of legal artistry can avoid the fact that these payments increase the compensation of eligible school paraprofessionals.”
The Council's lawyers turned the bargaining argument back on the mayor. If Mamdani thinks a deal with the union is the way to fill those jobs, City Hall has the authority to go make one. In the meantime, the Council says state law gives it room to make a one-time payment in an emergency. In March, it put the number of vacant aide positions at more than 1,000 and says students with disabilities have gone without services the city is required to provide. In some cases, a child who needs an aide on the bus can't even get to school without one.
By the time the Council's lawyers were done, they'd accused the mayor of trying to argue his case in an “imaginary world bereft of legislative history.” There's a line to remember the next time City Hall and the Council have to negotiate a budget.
The union had plenty to say about Mamdani last year, when it endorsed him for mayor. Now it has something to say to the judge, filing its own papers asking for the case to be dismissed. Union president Michael Mulgrew was happy to tell City Hall who he thought had actually done their job.
“The system is clearly broken. The City Council documented this emergency, saw it was not being addressed, and stepped in. That is their job.”
City Hall concedes the aides have been underpaid, and spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach says the suit is meant "to protect the right of every union to negotiate on behalf of its members" (Chalkbeat). It also has to think about what happens when the next union wants the Council to vote on a check while its contract is still in effect (Chalkbeat). Once lawmakers have done it for one group, every other union knows where to take its number.
The first checks are supposed to go out in January. The union's contract is in place until November 2027. The Council figured it could put $325 million on the city's tab before then. The union figured Mamdani was its guy. Now the union and the Council are counting on a judge to keep the mayor from killing the deal.