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Has the actions of New York been ruled against yet in a court of law, and have they continued to keep congestion pricing despite that ruling? That is how these conflicts get legally settled after all.
If so, then Hochul and others should be held in contempt of court. If not then the comparison I assume you're trying to make is not equivalent. From my understanding the relevant lawsuit is still in process
Edit: Better link, not directly to a PDF.
Edit 2: also to add this bit in
While it of course remains to be seen in the future, they do not state an intent to disobey the courts. This is par for the course when a legal conflict occurs, disagreements between parties are settled by the judicial branch.
As far as I am aware: The legal action for New York would be obedience to USDOT's termination until the court grants an injunction against that termination. In its lawsuit, New York requests a permanent injunction, which would go into effect after trial. But it does not appear that New York has bothered to seek a preliminary injunction, which would go into effect immediately, prior to trial. Trial obviously will not take place before USDOT's deadline. So it definitely looks like New York is planning to act illegally, though it has not yet actually done so.
This is a complicated procedural situation and while you're analysis is on the right track, it isn't quite correct and leads you to the wrong conclusion. New York didn't request an injunction in its lawsuit. For the court to issue an injunction, there has to be some kind of action involved (either for the opposing party to take or forbear from), and since the DOT has not engaged in any enforcement or threat of enforcement, such and action does not exist here. In other words, New York can't ask for an injunction, preliminary or permanent, because there isn't anything for the court to tell the Federal government to stop doing. New York is instead requesting declaratory judgment. In this case, New York has taken the position that the Secretary of Transportation does not have the authority to unilaterally rescind the approval, and is asking the court to confirm that position. If New York's position is correct, then they were never under any obligation to comply with the Secretary's request to begin with.
The strategic implications here are that, by filing suit in advance rather than waiting for the DOT to engage in some kind of enforcement action, New York gets is position on the record and throws the ball into the Federal government's court; the reason they went this route to begin with was specifically because it allows them to avoid compliance until a court has ruled on the matter. Strategically, New York's move here is so slick it makes me want to cry. Courts in general don't like to grand preliminary injunctions or TROs, and the standards for getting them are high: You have to demonstrate irreparable harm and a strong chance of prevailing on the merits. Suppose that New York waits until DOT begins enforcement, and also suppose that the case is a tossup on the merits. Now New York has to ask for a preliminary injunction while the case is pending, and they probably aren't going to get one. So now even if they prevail on the merits, they have to pause the program for the entire time the case is pending.
By asking for declaratory judgment in advance, the onus of getting preliminary injunctive relief is now on the Feds. Now that there's a live dispute over their authority, they can't just unilaterally assert it; they have to ask the court. And since the bar for getting this kind of relief is high, they aren't likely to get it. And if they simply don't seek the relief at all but instead try to penalize the state retroactively if they end up prevailing, it's going to be hard for them to do, since if the matter was so important why didn't they file for a preliminary injunction?
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While I don't know the specifics of this particular part of law, the MTA's entire argument maintains that the transport secretary does not have the legal authority to overturn it, and any injuction could in fact be requested by the department of transportation which they have not done. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/04/07/in-court-at-least-the-feds-are-not-trying-to-stop-congestion-pricing
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