As one of his final acts in office, Mayor Adams late on Christmas Eve vetoed a City Council bill that would temporarily allow victims of gender-based violence to sue their perpetrators even if the statute of limitations for their claim has lapsed.
The veto, which Adams issued just a week before he leaves office on Dec. 31, came even though the City Council passed the bill in a unanimous 48-0 vote last month.
The Council has 30 days to override a mayoral veto after it’s formally received by the chamber, a step that won’t happen until January. Three-fourths of the chamber’s 51 members would need to support an override for it to be successful.
The gender-based violence bill’s author, Queens Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers, said in a statement late Wednesday that the chamber “must” next month “override this callous veto and restore survivors’ right to seek accountability.”
“By vetoing Intro 1297 on Christmas Eve the Mayor is delivering a cruel ‘gift’ to survivors of gender-motivated violence: a message that their right to seek justice can wait,” Brooks-Powers said. “This veto is Mayor Adams once again bowing to big, powerful interests while turning his back on vulnerable New Yorkers.”
The Council will reconvene in early January for a new session, with Manhattan Councilwoman Julie Menin expected to be sworn in as the next Council speaker. Menin didn’t immediately return messages inquiring about what her plans might be regarding a potential override of Adams’ latest veto.
Julia Agos, a spokeswoman for outgoing Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, called the mayor’s veto an “attempt to deny survivors of sexual and gender-motivated violence the opportunity to hold their abusers accountable.”
“There is no excuse for allowing those responsible for violent abuses to escape accountability,” Agos added.
Brooks-Powers’ bill, first introduced this past May, would reopen an 18-month window for alleged victims of gender-based violence to file civil lawsuits regarding crimes that occurred before Jan. 9, 2022. A previous version of the Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which temporarily allowed such victims to bring suits after the statute of limitations, lapsed earlier this year.
The bill was crafted after hundreds of ex-juvenile detainees who had tried to sue New York City over alleged sexual abuse while incarcerated got their cases thrown out this year because a judge found the law as originally written didn’t allow for their claims to move forward. The bill is not limited to only letting such victims bring cases, though, but applies to anyone alleging gender-based violence.
In a statement to the Daily News, Adams said he vetoed the bill because he’s concerned about the motivations of a law firm that has been representing the alleged juvenile detainee victims.
“Domestic violence is a serious crime and perpetrators of this act of violence must be held accountable and brought to justice, but this bill would allow a single law firm that lobbied Speaker Adams and the City Council to pocket up to $300 million of taxpayer funds while reviving claims that have already been dismissed,” the mayor’s statement said. “This is not justice but a windfall for a fancy law firm to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of survivors as well as all New York taxpayers. Our office even tried to work with the City Council to ensure compensation for survivors of domestic violence and limit attorney’s fees for this one firm, but they refused to engage.”
Jerome Block, an attorney at Levy Konigsberg LLP, the law firm slammed by Adams, predicted the Council will override the veto and the survivors who fought for the bill’s passage will “ultimately prevail.”
“With its unanimous 48-0 vote, the City Council recognized that Intro 1297 is needed to give survivors a fair pathway to justice,” Block said. “This includes survivors of sexual abuse in juvenile detention centers, survivors sexually abused by doctors at major New York hospitals and survivors sex trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein.
“These survivors are represented by many law firms throughout the City who take pride in their work representing survivors. Any effort by Mayor Adams to attack lawyers is a transparent effort to deflect attention from his callous veto that is attempting to deprive survivors of their legal rights.“
Another law adopted on the state level in 2022, the Adult Survivors Act, enabled victims of sexual offenses to sue their perpetrators for a period of time even if their claims were time-barred.
Lorna Beach-Mathura, a former NYPD employee, sued Mayor Adams in early 2024 under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging he sexually assaulted her while they both served in the Police Department in the early 1990s. That suit remains pending, and Adams has vehemently denied Beach-Mathura’s accusations.
The Christmas Eve maneuver comes as Adams may move in his final few days to veto several other housing development-related bills the Council passed last week. After those bills passed, Adams’ office sharply criticized them and said the mayor would review his options.
Adams, a moderate-conservative Democrat whose first and only term in office was marred by his indictment and other corruption scandals, has had a rocky relationship with the City Council throughout his time in City Hall.
He has issued vetoes of Council bills related to everything from police transparency to housing subsidies. In nearly every instance, the Council has overridden him, forcing the measures into law over his objection.
Adams’ successor, Zohran Mamdani, will be sworn in as the next mayor Jan. 1.
