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Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Courts - New York judges may sue for raises
Joel Stashenko of the New York Law Journal reports today:
As the New York Legislature prepared to begin passing the 10th consecutive budget that does not contain a pay raise for judges, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye's attorney on Monday outlined her possible suit to force lawmakers and the governor to break the salary impasse."This is a legitimate case, a legitimate legal case," attorney Bernard W. Nussbaum told more than 100 judges and other supporters of a judicial pay raise who gathered Monday at New York State Bar Association headquarters in Albany.
Though Chief Judge Kaye continued to insist that a pay suit by the judiciary against the other two branches of state government was a last resort, she spoke for the first time of when she was prepared to bring the action.
"I would say shortly, during April," she said. "Earlier rather than later." * * *
Kaye said the problem with the judicial pay increase was, once again, the refusal of some lawmakers to depart from tradition and raise judges' salaries without also increasing their own. Neither judges nor legislators have gotten a raise since January 1999, and the chief judge said judges have since suffered a 26 percent erosion in salary due to inflation.
For a number of reasons -- chiefly, the poor economy and the fact it is an election year for all state lawmakers -- legislative leaders have discouraged their members from seeking a pay raise in the budget. More typically, lame-duck Legislatures return after Election Day to approve pay-raise bills in the increases that have been enacted over the past two decades.
Kaye said Monday that court administrators and judges are tired of being given lip service that a judicial pay increase is "right on the horizon." * * *
Kaye has retained Nussbaum, a former White House counsel and litigation partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, to represent her in the threatened suit against the governor and Legislature. Nussbaum is working pro bono.
If it comes to a suit, Nussbaum said the action would probably be filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The judiciary would seek to have the case heard as expeditiously as possible, he said.
"We're going to call the chief judge to the stand -- she's the plaintiff -- so she can describe some of the things she described today," Nussbaum told the pay advocates at the state bar Monday. "And then we're going to call [Assembly] Speaker [Sheldon] Silver to the stand, and we're going to call Sen. Bruno to the stand. ... We'll call [Gov.] David Paterson to the stand. And let them explain the hostage-taking. Let them explain why, for over a decade, they've allowed judges' pay to be cut by 26 percent. That'll be our case, and that'll be my arguments."
He said a suit by the judiciary would accuse the other two branches of failing their constitutional obligation to provide for an independent judiciary by not voting a raise sooner. The chief judge's suit would also contend that judges are being singled out for unfair pay treatment in a state government where, virtually, all other employees get cost-of-living adjustments and other salary increases.
The action also would argue that judges' constitutional protection against having their salaries diminished is being violated by denying them raises for nearly a decade. The effects of inflation during the period effectively represents a reduction in salary for judges, Chief Judge Kaye said.
According to Nussbaum, top state courts in both Pennsylvania and Illinois have upheld suits seeking higher judicial pay on grounds similar to those he would argue in New York on behalf of the chief judge.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 2, 2008 09:57 AM
Posted to Courts in general