DOJ Removes Lawyers Who Undermined Their Own Case Against New York Congestion Tax in Fumbled Legal Filing

A trio of Justice Department lawyers defending the U.S. Department of Transportation in a lawsuit over the congestion pricing program in New York City have been removed from their roles after they accidentally uploaded to the court docket an internal memo stating that the government doesn’t have much of a case.A spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan say the memo was mistakenly submitted to the federal court. “[It] was a completely honest error and was not intentional in any way,” Nicolas Biase tells the New York Times, adding that they took immediate steps to have the memo removed from the docket.Officials with the department of transportation, however, called the snafu “legal malpractice.”“Are SDNY lawyers on this case incompetent or was this their attempt to RESIST?” a Department of Transportation spokeswoman said in an email to Courthouse News Service when asked about the filing. “At the very least, it’s legal malpractice. It’s sad to see a premier legal organization continue to fall into such disgrace.”In the memo, which was addressed to transportation department senior trial attorney Erin Hendrixson, the Justice Department lawyers say that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s previous claims that congestion pricing is unlawful because it generates a “cordon pricing” zone in Manhattan without viable free alternatives and that the program is intended purely to raise revenue will probably not hold up in court.“Neither of these reasons is likely to convince the court,” the DOJ lawyers write in the memo, adding that “legislative history makes clear” that the plan is legal under the very statutes cited by Mr. Duffy. The Justice Department lawyers quickly scrambled to have the 11-page letter removed from the public record, asking the U.S. Southern District Court to seal the filing on the basis that the memo is privileged information and should never have entered into the public record.“Although the contents of the document have been made public in news reporting, the document was filed in error and should not be considered part of the court docket,” they said in a letter to the court.The Transportation Department official who spoke to Courthouse News Service insists that there is still very much a case for legal action and that the agency is considering halting funding for other projects if New York does not comply with its order to remove the system charging motorists to drive into lower Manhattan.“SDNY’s memo doesn’t represent reality,” the official said to the news outlet.“Kathy Hochul’s congestion pricing war against the working class was hastily approved by the Biden Administration after Donald Trump was elected.“Taxpayers already financed the highways that Hochul is now shutting down to the driving public and there is no free alternative. This is unprecedented and illegal,” the official added. In February, Mr. Duffy first moved forward with plans to block the Transportation Department’s earlier approval of the “pilot program” in the waning days of the Biden Administration. He called the tax a “slap in the face to working class Americans and small business owners.”His sentiments echoed those of Mr. Trump, who had spoken out against the congestion pricing plan during last year’s presidential campaign. “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING,” he said in a post to social media.Data compiled by New York’s transit authority during the first month congestion pricing showed an immediate drop in traffic within the congestion charge zone, with more than one million fewer vehicles on the road.

DOJ Removes Lawyers Who Undermined Their Own Case Against New York Congestion Tax in Fumbled Legal Filing

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