NYC: Court City

Consent decrees, settlements, and federal monitors hobble New York City’s basic capabilities. The bill for these arrangements could exceed the municipal government’s limited ability to raise taxes. Third-party legal restraints also encourage helplessness. Why fix Rikers Island ourselves, when the federal government might just take over?

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What is to be done? The first step is to stop entering new agreements. The reasoning for Adams to enter into the city’s new agreement restricting the NYPD’s ability to kettle protesters is inscrutable. With no lower-court federal judge having yet ruled on the practice, why not at least wait for a court judgment?

Second, New York City should appeal any intermediate court decision to the highest court possible. Yes, in the “right to shelter” case, the city benefited, in the short term, from settling, likely winning more state aid by shielding Albany from a broad, high-court ruling guaranteeing a statewide right to shelter. But in the long run, Gotham took on an open-ended obligation to house the entire world, with limited, discretionary aid from the state. Similarly, if the practice of stop, question, and frisk is federally unconstitutional, the Supreme Court should say so; if it isn’t, the NYPD should stop laboring under an indefinite federal monitor.

Ed Morrissey

This isn't just a problem for cities, but also states and executive-branch agencies. And too often, the presumptive targets of these lawsuits are colluding with the plaintiffs to force policy changes that voters wouldn't adopt otherwise. There are too many examples of this to enumerate here -- enviros collude with Dem administrations on such lawsuits, for instance -- but one memorable instance in Minnesota got thwarted four years ago. The Walz administration tried to change election law by consent decree in a smelly 'settlement' with an activist group, only to have the Eighth Circuit toss it out immediately for its attempt to bypass the legislature. 

These consent decrees can be fought, as Gelinas advises. Too often, the politicians got exactly what they wanted without any accountability for their policy changes. Courts need to be restricted from interfering in such policy matters. 

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