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New York City's court case seeking to invalidate Chautauqua County's emergency order preventing the city from sending migrants to Chautauqua County will, for now, be heard in state Supreme Court in Mayville.
State Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank in Manhattan ruled earlier this week that New York City's motion to hear all of the court cases challenging executive orders similar to County Executive PJ Wendel's order be heard in New York County. Frank dismissed that motion, though it could be appealed.
New York City officials have argued the executive orders should be challenged in one court for judicial economy and the city's convenience to maintain the action in New York County, saying the material events prompting the lawsuit are happening in New York City.
"In opposing the city's motion and Petition, Respondents largely ignore the glaring legal defects in their (executive orders)," Doris Barnhardt, the attorney representing New York City, wrote in one of her memorandums of law submitted in the case. "Instead, they recite a false narrative in which the city, by seeking to temporarily place at its own expense a small number of asylum seekers in their jurisdictions, is somehow burdening the Respondent communities. But the City is retaining fiscal responsibility for the persons it places outside the City in accordance with the (Social Services Law) -- as the city has repeated over and over and as respondents are well aware. In fact, the Respondents' fierce opposition to the city is animated by the same motives that led to the EOs: to keep asylum seekers out.
Frank disagreed with the city's reasoning, instead saying the case arisis from the city's attempt to move migrants rather than the influx of migrants.
"The court does not find the city's arguments persuasive. First, the material events giving rise to the litigation is not the influx of migrants arriving in New York City, the material events that give rise to this instant litigation are the issuance and enforcement of the Executive Orders issued by respondents," Frank wrote in his decision. "The petition and the relief sought make that clear. Moreover, the court finds that the city has failed to establish any compelling circumstances as to warrant that venue remain in New York County in violation of the applicable statutes that mandate the judicial proceeding or action against a county to be in said county or in the "'judicial district where the respondent made the determination complained of.'"
Chautauqua County is mentioned several times in the more than 400 documents filed thus far in the case. Chautauqua and 33 other counties are being represented by Brian Sokoloff of Sokoloff Stern LLP, who argued in his memorandum of law opposing New York City's lawsuit that the city is creating an illegal transfer program to ship homeless people around the state while cutting off support for those people four months after they leave New York City. Sokoloff argued New York City is trying to issue its own state of emergency to supercede state law while not acknowledging county executives across the state have the same power as New York City Mayor Eric Adams to issue an executive order.
"Finally, while the city tries to claim there will be no harm to the destination localities from the city's ill-thought-out, extra-regulatory program, the experience of Dutchess County -- a respondent here -- shows the opposite," Sokoloff wrote. "The city turned the Poughkeepsie Red Roof Inn into a homelsss shelter, bused dozens of people there, commandeered the hotel and refused to tell Dutchess County even the names of the new inhabitants. Within days, one tuberculosis case turned into eight, now the responsibility of Dutchess County, whose attempts to contract trace the city thwarted with its secret program."
Patrick Slagle, county attorney and deputy county executive, filed an affidavit in the case, saying he is unaware of any attempts by New York City to attempt to relocate homeless people, including migrants, to Chautauqua County, of any plan by the city to pay for the public assistance needs of relocated homeless people after their arrival in Chautauqua County or any process to return the homeless to temporary housing in New York City.
"Toward that end, I can state, without equivocation, that the city of New York's unilateral decision to bus homeless persons, primarily or exclusively migrants, to Chautauqua County poses a grave risk to the social, health and emergency resources of Chautauqua County, particularly now, when the county's inventory of housing and emergency housing is already in crisis," Slagle wrote. "The mass arrival of these homeless individuals into Chautauqua County will exacerbate a social, health and emergency service crisis, causing an increase in homelessness and will threaten the health and public safety of the relocated persons as well as Chautauqua County residents."