Mayor Mamdani is mounting a legal challenge to a law passed by the City Council that forces New York City’s public school system to give a $10,000 boost to low-paid teacher aides.
The Council passed the legislation last month with enough votes to override a mayoral veto — leaving Mamdani with few practical options to stop the measure, which he opposed. On Wednesday morning, the mayor let the bill lapse into law without his signature.
His administration filed the lawsuit in Manhattan state court by the afternoon in an effort to block the payments.
“We will not allow the political process to replace the collective bargaining table,” Matt Rauschenbach, the mayor’s spokesman, said in a statement.
“The City is filing a lawsuit to protect the right of every union to negotiate on behalf of its members, to fight for the workplace they deserve and ensure that workers — not politicians — determine their own futures. We will work towards a quick resolution that respects workers, protects the City’s finances, and ensures that the Council does not interfere with collective bargaining in the future.”
The Council and the United Federation of Teachers, the local union that represents the public school paraprofessionals and pushed for the law, pledged to defend the pay boost against Mamdani’s lawsuit.
“Every member of the Council, in a unanimous and bipartisan vote, supported the RESPECT Check Act,” Council Speaker Julie Menin and Councilwoman Carmen De La Rosa, the bill’s sponsor, said in a joint statement. “This law is not only the right thing to do, it is also the fiscally responsible thing to do,” they said, citing 1,600 paraprofessional vacancies that they believe contribute to the city being sued for unmet special education services.
“The Council will vigorously defend the law,” they said.
The law sends four installments of $2,500 next year to paraprofessionals, whose starting salary is about $32,600. The Council and UFT have said persistent low wages have led to a staffing shortage felt most acutely by students with disabilities.
“We’re opening school in three weeks, and we have a major crisis sitting in front of us,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in an interview with the Daily News.
“I get all the politics,” he said. “It’s New York City. It’s drama. It’s conflict — I get it. But if you’re one of the families — if you’re one of the thousands of families whose child does not have a paraprofessional — you have to understand how this is affecting their entire life. It’s real, and it’s devastating.”
Mamdani has said under New York labor rules known as the Taylor Law, pay must be negotiated at the bargaining table, not through Council legislation. The mayor enthusiastically supported an earlier, more costly version of the bill on the campaign trail, but changed his tune after he started governing.
In the suit, the Mamdani administration maintained that the Council acted outside the bounds of its authority and broke laws around collective bargaining in giving paraprofessionals the pay boost. The mayor, chancellor and Department of Education are all plaintiffs in the case.
“The Council has set a perilous and unlawful precedent with huge fiscal consequences for the DOE and the City — and, by extension, the tax-paying public,” Steve Banks, the city’s corporation counsel, wrote in the suit, adding that, if this law goes into effect, other public employees will also seek their own payments from the Council.
While Banks asked the judge to declare the legislation “unlawful” and permanently ban its enforcement, the administration did not ask for a preliminary injunction and the law currently remains in place. The first payment is scheduled for January.
The checks come with a price tag of $325 million over one calendar year, or two budget cycles, according to a Council fiscal impact statement. The pay boost is one-time and not used to calculate pension benefits.
Rauschenbach, the mayoral spokesman, said the Council’s legislation “sets a dangerous precedent” by letting politicians work around union bargaining.
He added the one-time payment model “does not solve the underlying, long-term pay inequities facing paraprofessionals.”
The current DOE-UFT contract is set to expire in November 2027. Mulgrew said recently Mamdani himself has been involved, and the mayor and union are making “significant progress” toward a permanent solution for paraprofessionals.
The union boss added the solution must involve a “structured” career ladder, training and “a wage that allows (paraprofessionals) to live, and not live in desperate poverty, in New York City.”