Nominee to Be NYC's Top Lawyer Indicates Support for Vaccine Mandates, Mayoral Power to Override City Laws with Emergency Orders

At a City Council committee hearing, Corporation Counsel nominee Muriel Goode-Trufant backed mandates and snubbed City workers, while Council Member Ariola pushed for their equitable reinstatement.

Last Wednesday’s New York City Council committee hearing on the nomination of Muriel Goode-Trufant to head the City’s Law Department made a couple things clear: The nearly 35-year veteran of the department is a shoo-in for the top spot and will continue the City’s now three-year court battle against the essential workers it put out of work under NYC’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Goode-Trufant also gave every indication that she would support future mandates and other emergency orders that suspend New York City laws.

A group of current and former City employees who lost work under NYC’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate came to City Hall to demonstrate their objection to the nomination of Goode-Trufant to be the City’s top lawyer. They later attended City Council’s Rules, Privileges and Elections committee hearing on the nomination, where two of them gave testimony. Matt Connor, Tom Lapolla, and Jack Lin with the organization Bravest for Choice spoke with me as the group headed into City Hall.

The hearing was held by City Council’s Committee on Rules, Privileges and Elections, following Goode-Trufant’s nomination by Mayor Eric Adams to serve as Corporation Counsel. As New York City’s top lawyer, Corporation Counsel leads the Law Department, which handles civil cases and juvenile delinquency proceedings. Goode-Trufant has been doing the job as Acting Corporation Counsel since Sylvia Hinds-Radix stepped down from the position at the end of May.

You can watch the full hearing on City Council’s website or here:

The contrast with the reception many City Council members gave Mayor Adams’s last nominee at his confirmation hearing could not have been stronger. In August, attorney Randy Mastro was subjected to over eight hours of often hostile questioning before the full City Council in a session that was later described by one City Council Member as an “inquisition” conducted by progressive Council members. Mastro withdrew as a nominee shortly after.

At Wednesday’s committee hearing, many Council members rolled out the red carpet for Goode-Trufant, hailing her as an expected “strong partner” with City Council. Council Member Diana Ayala even passed on the opportunity to ask questions, simply letting Goode-Trufant know she was “really excited to see a woman sitting before us, a woman of color” and wishing her “all the luck in the world.”

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams took a more substantive approach, with a series of questions that touched on how Goode-Trufant would navigate the relationship between City Council and the mayor, especially during conflicts over legislation.

Then Adams moved on to the topic of executive power in this exchange:

Adams: Pursuant to Section 24 of the New York State Executive Law, the mayor may issue an emergency executive order to suspend a local law. Do you believe the use of this power must be rare, narrowly tailored, limited in time span, and that such power should never be used when the disaster in question could be resolved using the day-to-day tools of city government, i.e., rulemaking or legislation?

Goode-Trufant: State law requires that when the mayor exercises emergency authority to suspend a law or regulation, the suspension must meet a number of conditions: One, the suspension must safeguard the health and welfare of the public. Two, it must be reasonably necessary. And three, the suspension should provide for the minimum deviation from the law or rule deemed necessary. State law also provides that emergency suspensions must expire after five days unless they are renewed based on the relevant facts and circumstances.

Rulemaking and legislation can also address the impact of an emergency or be instrumental in preparing for an emergency. But when an emergency occurs, there will often be a need for an immediate response that doesn't allow for the usual legislative or rulemaking processes.

That said, all parts of the city government working together have succeeded in getting us through severe weather disasters, 9-11, the devastating pandemic, and other emergencies. I take seriously our role in advising all our clients about the tools our state laws provide for emergency response.

Adams: In your estimation, in the past, let's say six months, have the executive orders that are issued—do they follow those requirements that you just stated?

Goode-Trufant: Yes.

Adams: Is it your estimation then that the mayor should usurp legislative powers during emergencies?

Goode-Trufant: It depends on what type of emergencies and what the emergency requires.

Adams: Okay. That goes back to my former question then. So in your estimation, do you feel that executive powers that were used, executive orders that were used in the past six months, follow those requirements and that the mayor has not usurped legislative powers?

Goode-Trufant: I think that the emergency orders issued within the past six months were necessary under the state law requirements.

Speaker Adams was clearly alluding to City Council’s recent conflict with Mayor Adams over solitary confinement when she asked these questions. In July, the mayor issued emergency executive orders that suspended parts of the City Rules and Administrative Code to block City Council legislation limiting solitary confinement. Those orders remain in effect.

But Goode-Trufant’s responses don’t just provide her opinion on that issue; they’re also suggestive of her general attitude toward executive power. Her description of the Law Department’s role in a declared emergency focuses on advising the mayor how to make maximal use of legal “tools” rather than emphasizing legal limitations on emergency powers.

Goode-Trufant mentions “the devastating pandemic” as an instance of “all parts of the city government working together” to get us through an emergency, glossing over the extraordinary uses of emergency orders during that period by mayors de Blasio and Adams, and their health commissioners.

Among the most notable were former mayor de Blasio’s “Key to NYC” Order 225 and Order 316, which barred unvaccinated New Yorkers (certain nonresidents were exempt) from restaurants, entertainment and recreation venues, and gyms.

Those orders suspended Appendix 7-A of Chapter 7 of the Rules of the City of New York so that the mayor could impose thousands of dollars of fines on business owners who failed to enforce the mandate on every patron, employee, volunteer, intern, and contractor over the age of four, and changed the definition of “just cause” in section 20-1271 of the City’s Administrative Code to allow employers to suspend fast food workers immediately for failing to provide proof of vaccination and fire them as soon as they had had 30 days’ notice of the requirement.

Ariola Pushes for Equitable Reinstatement of City Employees

Most of the other emergency orders that mandated workplace vaccination requirements were signed not by the mayor but by then Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner David Chokshi, and Goode-Trufant got a chance at the hearing to address those too.

It is those workplace mandates—especially the mandates on public sector workers—that have led to the most lawsuits against the City, the mayor, and City agencies. As Managing Attorney and then Acting Corporation Counsel, Goode-Trufant has had a leading role throughout the Law Department’s over three-year legal battle against some of the City’s own “essential workers.”

She got an opportunity to address the ongoing litigation when Council Member Joann Ariola questioned her. Ariola, who has been a consistent advocate for City workers who lost their jobs under the municipal worker vaccine mandate and have not been reinstated, inquired about the Law Department’s dogged pursuit of appeals against workers, and pressed her to take the department in a new direction:

[I have added some links to cases they mention, to provide additional context.]

Ariola: I'd like to talk about some inequities that I have found with the Law Department, especially in cases regarding the de Blasio administration's mandates, the vaccine mandates in particular. This is a mandate that has now been deemed arbitrary and capricious by judges across the city and the state, but thousands of our city workers are still not back at their jobs.

Some were terminated, some retired, and others left their jobs because of not wanting to take the vaccine for religious and medical reasons, and you said in your testimony, which made me very hopeful, that you are here to follow the rule of law and civil rights of people. Yet time after time, these people, these people who work for our city, have won their cases, won their Article 78s, and yet the city continues to appeal these cases, and spending taxpayer dollars to appeal cases that they're losing.

Now, once these cases are lost, some members are being allowed to come back to work and others are not, and yet they're similarly situated. When they win their Article 78, they're not allowed to come back, yet others do. And no reasons are given.

And we've been in touch with the Law Department about this, and I know that you've been there, so I'm hoping that you could say to me and make a commitment to me that under your leadership that there would be equity. That there would not be some members who are similarly situated, won their Article 78s to come back to work by a judge lawfully, who followed the rule of law, would be able to come back to work.

There's also waivers that some employees were made to sign and others not. So what I'm asking you is will—under your leadership—will there be more equity and protection of civil rights for every single civil servant that works for the City of New York?

Goode-Trufant: Is the question concerning vaccine mandates in particular or in general?

Ariola: This is for the vaccine mandate in particular, because this is where we seem to have the stumbling block. We have Article 78s that have been won. People have been ordered back to work, and yet the city is appealing it. Either there's a stay or they've lost the appeals. Taxpayer dollars are being spent. It's unfair.

It's unfair to the people who are now living in shelters, living in their cars, living with family, just by charity. And meanwhile, courts, judges have ordered that they come back to work. A mandate that was now called arbitrary and capricious, and now ineffective by the former Department of Health doctor and the most current. And we've been fighting for so many of them to come back to work. And many have, yet others that are similarly situated are being turned down. Why is that?

Goode-Trufant: We have in fact pursued some cases to the Court of Appeals. We recently won a case concerning teachers. There is another pending case in the Court of Appeals. Because the circumstances shifted from time to time during the pandemic, there are different classifications of employees—some who did not follow initial orders, some who did not work with the reasonable accommodation process. It is not a one size fit all because the circumstances of the individual employee does matter in evaluating their situation.

But what is important is to make certain that should the city have another crisis pandemic like we had with COVID, that we are able to keep the public as a whole safe. [emphasis mine]

Here, Goode-Trufant gives something close to an answer to a question that has been asked repeatedly by affected workers, City Council members, and even judges: Why is the City still pursuing these cases, into appeals and even to the state’s highest court? Why doesn’t it just reinstate the workers? The fundamental reason, she suggests, is that the City is protecting its power to impose similar mandates in the future.

Ariola acknowledged this and continued to press her case for equitable treatment:

Ariola: That is true, and they would still be required to adhere to that mandate if it were so brought back. But the problem here is that the Law Department does not have a consistent policy when it comes to these particular people.

We have had 16 sanitation workers that won their case, and yet the City Law Department appeals it and then you hire outside counsel in Hinds-Radix and pay them, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. These are taxpayer dollars, taxpayer dollars that we're supposed to be saving.

So I would like to know that under your leadership, that you would take more of a look at this and bring equity. I can send you, and I would like to, and I will send you dozens of cases, dozens of cases that are exactly situated to the ones that you brought back to work, yet others are still waiting to hear and are unemployed.

And when I say that they are living in cars and in shelters and relying on the charity of family, I'm not making that up and I'm not exaggerating it. But we need to see more equity and we've been really leading the charge on this. But each time we try, we hit a stumbling block.

I'm hoping that if you should make it through, that you will look at these cases and you'll see that—and I'm going to send them to you, because you'll see that they are exactly situated the same and there shouldn't be any inequity for all of them to come back, especially when the mandate was lifted.

Goode-Trufant got the opportunity to meet some of the people involved in those “dozens of cases” right at the hearing—but she took a pass. Two FDNY employees who were pushed out of their jobs under the mandate testified at the end of the hearing. Goode-Trufant got up and left as they sat down in front of the mics.

Outside the chamber door, Council Member Ariola spoke to her about having a conversation with affected City workers, some of whom were standing next to her. The Acting Corporation Counsel walked away without acknowledging them, in a snub that was captured on video by reporter and commentator Christopher Leon Johnson:

Likely Goode-Trufant Confirmation Points to More of the Same for Workers in Court

Johnson himself gave testimony at the end of the hearing, calling for transparency on all sides and spelling out what was obvious throughout the hearing: It was a formality, and the expected full City Council confirmation hearing probably will be too. Most of the City Council members are more than happy to have Goode-Trufant take the Law Department reins.

Mayor Eric Adams has been questioned a few times this year about why New York City continues to fight the workers in court, and whether he supports their reinstatement and City Council Resolution 5. If passed, Reso 5 would in turn support passage of a state bill requiring the reinstatement of New York City municipal workers who lost their jobs under the mandate.

One affected worker questioned the mayor on this topic at a Staten Island community meeting in May (see his response here), I asked him at a July meeting in the Bronx, and Rampa News Editor-in-Chief Monika Adamski raised the issue at a City Hall press briefing in September. Each time the mayor has sidestepped questions and passed the buck to the Law Department, saying he will follow the courts.

While some dispute the idea that the mayor lacks authority to reinstate the workers himself—as Council Member Kristy Marmorato recently put it, “he’s the boss”—it’s clear that he is leaving the issue to the Corporation Counsel to resolve. And Wednesday’s hearing painted a pretty clear picture of how she’s inclined to handle it. It also raised the stakes for Resolution 5, which has yet to be put on the schedule for a vote by the full City Council after being considered at a Civil Service and Labor Committee hearing in June.

Goode-Trufant’s Wednesday hearing went out with a minor bang after the nominee left. Taxi driver and advocate Raul Rivera was the last member of the public to give testimony, and he laid into the committee for not paying attention when workers spoke. Rivera said that he too was unvaccinated.

“Advocating for seven years in this city, fighting for our rights . . . we learn that we are losing our rights,” Rivera said. “This vaccine mandate was not a law. . . I don’t think you Council members are listening to us.” When he accused committee chair Keith Powers of responding to criticism with nothing but a “dumb look,” Powers had him thrown out by security for failing to be respectful in the chamber. As Powers closed the session, Rivera could still be heard calling him out from the hall: “You a clown!”

Bravest for Choice Comments on the Hearing

The organization Bravest for Choice, which advocates for firefighters and EMS workers adversely affected by the mandate, issued this statement after the hearing:

Today, Bravest For Choice attended the meeting of the New York City Council Committee on Rules, Privileges, and Elections in protest of Mayor Adams’ nomination of Muriel Goode-Trufant for the position of Corporation Counsel. Trufant, who was named first assistant Corp. Counsel in 2023, is the current acting Corp Counsel, and Mayor Adams’ pick to succeed Sylvia Hinds-Radix—who counted her defense of the COVID-19 vaxx mandate among her successes in her farewell address to her Law Department colleagues.

The ongoing opposition of the Law Dept. to litigation on behalf of city workers fired for declining the COVID shot signals that we can expect the persecution of these workers to continue if Goode-Trufant is to be confirmed by the City Council. This position is reflected in the Law Department's 2023 Annual Report, in which the city's defense of the vaxx mandate is presented as a feather in the Law Department's cap.

The report notes this defense as an accomplishment in two separate instances:

“Pandemic-related Litigation: Handled a range of pandemic-related litigation in federal and state appellate courts, including constitutional and statutory challenges to employee vaccination requirements.”

“COVID Vaccination Mandate: Maintained successful defense of the reasonable accommodation process employed by agencies when considering religious and medical exemptions from the mandate, as well as defended dozens of Federal and State court actions challenging individual denials of religious and medical accommodations to the COVID vaccine mandate.”

Goode-Trufant's testimony today further solidified the expectation that the Law Department will continue to expend resources to fight our displaced workers. Notably, when questioned by Councilwoman Ariola, Goode-Trufant indicated that the Law Department is appealing mandate cases to uphold the city's ability to take similar measures during future public health emergencies. For her participation in the systematic persecution of city workers that have declined the COVID shot and for clinging to the supposed validity of the fraudulent mandate (illuminated by COVID czar Dr. Jay Varma's recent expose in which he acknowledged natural immunity while pushing a zero tolerance policy of coerced vaccination), Bravest For Choice stands firmly in opposition to Mayor Adams’ most recent nomination of Muriel Goode-Trufant for Corporation Counsel.