Eric Adams - Mayor of New York City, Part 4
in Political Scene ·
Anthony Rodriguez8 said:The judge's take was basically this:
"The decision being disputed doesn't actually have retroactive effect; it’s more of a quasi-retroactivity issue... Based on legal theory and consultations with professors from three different law schools, the people affected by this specific measure had legitimate expectations based on final administrative acts. Therefore, in this particular case, a proportionality test had to be conducted. I believe the test showed that the goals New York City intended to achieve by implementing the disputed measure were legitimate, however, it is my opinion that the new measure itself isn't proportionate to the objective it was meant to accomplish," the judge stated just before the vote.
If I'm following this correctly, everything is fine, except for the fact that SHE thinks the new measure isn't proportionate to its goal. In my view, she shouldn't be offering her personal opinions; she should be ruling strictly according to the Law. If what she said is true, then there isn't even a single reason to dispute the verdict.
Look, the court *has* to evaluate whether a decision is proportionate—I don't see what the confusion is here. The law can't possibly account for every single conceivable scenario. It’s just like when we dealt with those COVID mandates, where the courts had to weigh whether measures infringing on certain freedoms (freedom of movement, assembly, etc.) were actually proportionate to a legitimate goal (like protecting the public from a contagious disease). It's the exact same thing here: the goal is legitimate—protecting the city budget and maintaining financial stability—but the court determined that the decision, in its current form, placed an unproportional burden on existing subsidy recipients (essentially a drastic reduction of rights they had already secured).