Muriel Goode-Trufant Confirmed as 82nd New York City Corporation Counsel

The (not so) new top NYC lawyer is expected to continue litigating against workers seeking reinstatement after losing jobs under vaccine mandates. Two of their advocates commented on the confirmation.

New York City Council has confirmed attorney Muriel Goode-Trufant to be the 82nd Corporation Counsel leading the City’s Law Department, which handles civil cases and juvenile delinquency proceedings. She has been serving as Acting Corporation Counsel since Sylvia Hinds-Radix stepped down from the position at the end of May.

The fact that Goode-Trufant is already doing the job and has been at the Law Department for nearly 35 years ensures a seamless transition when she drops “Acting” from her title. And that has been the main objection of detractors who were hoping for the Law Department to take a different direction under new leadership and end its ongoing litigation against City workers who have sued for reinstatement and back pay after losing their jobs under the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

While Goode-Trufant answered questions from City Council members at last month’s Committee on Rules, Privileges and Elections hearing, she was not questioned by the full City Council as previous nominee Randy Mastro had been in a marathon drubbing that led to him withdrawing from nomination.

Instead, the full City Council vote to confirm Goode-Trufant became a footnote to the main event of today’s hearing, which was passage of the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity” legislation that will overhaul NYC’s zoning rules in an effort to increase the amount of available housing.

City Council held a special press event to highlight City of Yes before the momentous vote on it, and the mayor and Governor Kathy Hochul showed up afterwards for a victory lap, making nary a mention of Goode-Trufant. Mayor Adams’s press office issued a statement “celebrating” the confirmation.

Forty-one City Council members voted to confirm Goode-Trufant, seven voted no, and three abstained. All seven of the no votes came from members of City Council’s Common Sense Caucus, which includes the Council’s handful of Republican members. Several of the caucus members have been vocal supporters of reinstatement for workers who lost their City jobs under the mandates.

The seven no votes came from City Council Members Joann Ariola, Joe Borelli, David Carr, Robert Holden, Kristy Marmorato, Vickie Paladino, and Inna Vernikov. Common Sense Caucus members Kalman Yeger and Susan Zhuang abstained. The third abstention came from Council Member Darlene Mealy, who is not a member of the Common Sense Caucus but commented, “I think we could do better.”

Council Member Joann Ariola spoke forcefully on behalf of the City workers whom Goode-Trufant has been fighting in court before voting no:

Council Member David Carr also spoke on behalf of the workers and cited additional objections to Goode-Trufant’s confirmation:

You can watch the full City Council hearing here:

While the confirmation was hardly a surprise after the warm reception most Council members gave Goode-Trufant at the committee hearing on her nomination, some advocates for workers seeking reinstatement saw today’s vote as—in the words of Bravest for Choice member Matt Connor—a “roll call of who is really on our side.”

Connor commented following Goode-Trufant’s confirmation today:

What is one to make of today’s 41-7 New York City Council vote in favor of confirming Mayor Adams’s nomination of Muriel Goode-Trufant for the position of Corporation Counsel?

For those of us that have spent the past three years standing up to the COVID-19 Vaxx Mandate in New York City—at the expense of our own careers, finances, and in some cases even our own homes, the vote is salt in the wound to say the least.

Many of these workers have organized into grassroots organizations like Bravest For Choice, Teachers For Choice, Educators for Freedom, Cops 4 Freedom, and Strongest United. Broader coalitions have emerged as well, such as the National Coalition of Frontline Workers, and the grassroots collective NY Workers For Choice, which have both been instrumental in the effort to legislate a solution to the executive and judicial impasse in which we find ourselves. This effort has brought forth Resolution 0005-2024, an olive-branch call for the New York State legislature to reinstate workers to the vocations they love, while the judicial challenge unfolds (a process the city has prolonged at exorbitant taxpayer expense). The minority of dissenting votes at today’s stated meeting of the City Council is curiously short, as compared to the fourteen bi-partisan sponsors of “Reso 5,” as a vote to confirm Muriel Goode-Trufant is, by “common sense” standards, diametrically opposed to the spirit of the resolution in question. Inarguably, the fastest route to court-ordered reinstatement and compensation is for Corporation Counsel to drop the appeals to all COVID related litigation wins, especially to the sweeping decision in the New York State Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Garvey et al. plaintiffs (a group of terminated DSNY workers). And yet, at Trufant's confirmation hearing—a dog and pony show compared to the lambasting Mayor Eric Adams’s last nominee, Randy Mastro, received this summer—the nominee clearly indicated the intent to stay the course on the appeals, to preserve the City of New York’s option to exercise the same emergency powers all over again.

For many “workers for choice” in the medical freedom movement, ensuring that the executive overreach of the COVID-19 era never happens again is perhaps even more important than reinstatement and compensation for lost wages during the vaxx-mandate. For this reason, many are watching the vote closely as a mark of who in local government is truly on the side of truth and fairness, in the wake of COVID. During the last few months, we have witnessed a tidal shift that has validated many of the positions so many workers took early on—a shift spurred on by revelations during the recent Louder With Crowder “Varmagate” expose, the publication of The Pfizer Papers, and the release this week of the final report of the Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The fact that half of the sponsors of Reso 5 failed to make the connection that the confirmation of Muriel Goode-Trufant is antithetical to the spirit of the bill they themselves signed onto is not only alarming, but may be a sign that workers in New York City may have to advocate for federal intervention to initiate reinstatements. This process has already begun: this past week a letter to that effect, addressed to the Presidential transition team, and penned by fired DOE employees Aura Moody and Diane Pagan, garnered 250 signatures by workers negatively impacted by the vaxx-mandate.

While Mayor Eric Adams celebrates Trufant's confirmation, and estimates her “supremely qualified and capable,” the 250 signatories of the open letter to the transition team reminds our republic that “supremely qualified and capable” is in the eye of the beholder. And by my count, 250-41 is a crystal-clear majority vision for the future regarding those forced out of the city workforce for declining the COVID shot.

Michael Kane from Teachers for Choice also commented:

Trufant is basically the mayor’s lawyer. She is going to do as the mayor tells her. So while Teachers for Choice opposes Trufant as Corp Counsel, the real issue is Mayor Adams himself.

Since the mayor has repeatedly passed the buck to the Law Department when asked about reinstating workers, and Goode-Trufant has made it clear that she will continue to fight for the City’s ability to impose vaccine mandates, the now three-year legal battle between New York City’s government and the essential workers it fired for declining to take a COVID-19 vaccine seems set to keep grinding forward.