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NYC and bus companies vie in court Thursday. More than $700M in migrant costs is on the line.
By
Arya Sundaram
Published May 2, 2024
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Arya Sundaram / Gothamist
By
Arya Sundaram
Published May 2, 2024
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Attorneys for New York City and a host of private bus companies will square off in state Supreme Court on Thursday over the Adams administration's bid to recoup costs for sheltering and caring for the tens of thousands of migrants bused to the city during the last two years.
The city is asking a judge to require bus companies to post a bond of at least $708 million to pay for the cost of sheltering and caring for the migrants they transported to the city, primarily from Texas. At the heart of the novel legal dispute is the constitutionality of a centuries-old New York measure, Section 149 of the State Social Services Law, which bars the transport of “needy” people into the state in order to make them a “public charge.”
Attorneys for the 17 bus companies named in the suit and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which recently filed a brief in the case, argue that the law violates the migrants’ constitutional right to interstate travel. New York City contends that the law is valid and bars those who seek to burden it. The case is another chapter in an ongoing saga over who should shoulder the city's costs for the migrants crisis, estimated to reach $10.5 billion by 2025.
“This (busing) is weaponizing the movement of people from one state to another in order to force a change in national immigration policies,” Steven Banks, an outside attorney hired by the city and former commissioner of the Department of Social Services, told Judge Mary Rosado in a meeting at Manhattan's state Supreme Court last month.
Attorneys for the bus companies cite a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1941 that struck down a similar statute in California. They say the New York law oversteps the state's powers by interfering with interstate commerce, which falls under the federal government's purview.
“If somebody from New Jersey brings an uncle or an aunt that's poor and drops them off here, technically, using the city's argument, they should have to pay for that person,” said Robert Hantman, an attorney for Roadrunner Charters, the only bus company that has formally agreed to halt sending buses to the city for now.
Banks replied in court that the city wouldn’t sue family members or nonprofits under the same grounds, calling the busing policy a “once-in-a-generation, well-articulated plan to break the social services system in New York City.”
The lawsuit takes aim at the bus companies but leaves out the state of Texas, whose Republican Gov. Greg Abbott hired them – an omission that bus company attorneys have criticized in court. Hantman accused the city of “forum shopping” to avoid a federal trial with a state government. Banks has argued in legal filings that the state of Texas was not necessary to include in the case.
A spokesperson for Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but Abbott called the suit "baseless" earlier this year. At the time, he said all the migrants bused to New York City had gone voluntarily and added: "Mayor Adams knows nothing about the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, or about the constitutional right to travel that has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Abbott's office announced last week that it had thus far sent more than 43,400 migrants to New York City. Adams officials say nearly 200,000 migrants have gone through the city’s shelter intake system since spring of 2022.
Abbott told a crowd at the New York state Republican Party annual gala last month that he wouldn't stop sending migrant buses until President Joe Biden left office.
“Every day these increased costs are having an impact on city services,” Banks told Rosado, the judge, last month. “For those who suffer from that impact, a money judgment after the fact will be cold comfort.”
Several of the bus companies filed a motion to dismiss New York City's lawsuit late last week. One of the bus companies filed a suit earlier this year against the city of Chicago, challenging its restrictions on when and where buses could drop off migrants.
Attorneys for the NYCLU said the Adams administration's arguments in the case are at odds with its position in other lawsuits, these targeting a handful of upstate counties over executive orders blocking New York City from sheltering migrants in their local hotels.
City Hall spokesperson Liz Garcia pointed to how the city, unlike the bus companies, planned to pay the costs to shelter and care for migrants upstate — in accordance with the “public charge” rule, she said.
NYCLU filed a lawsuit last spring against Rockland and Orange counties over their migrant shelter restrictions on New York City's behalf.
Beth Haroules, the NYCLU attorney who filed the brief in the city’s suit against the bus companies, summed up how she saw the city’s position: “We support interstate right to travel, except when we don't.”
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new york city
Race And Justice Unit
Asylum Seekers
Arya Sundaram
Arya is a reporter covering race and justice. Got a tip? Email: [email protected] or reach Arya on Signal at 512-650-8767.
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