A New York City judge pumped the brakes on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rollout of a highly controversial tax on luxury second homes, issuing an order for City Hall to remove a list that exposed the names, addresses, and property values of over 900,000 homeowners in the Big Apple. Judge Wayne Ozzi slapped a temporary restraint on the Mamdani administration from moving forward on the tax based on the disputed property roll or mailed notices.
The order also prohibits the city government from enforcing deadlines against homeowners who are caught up in the roll. It also prevents the city from imposing, assessing, or collecting the surcharge against homeowners listed on the supplemental roll or from sending out notices without first making the individualized determination and providing the notice that is required by New York state law.
A video of a report from Fox News covering the story is being shared all across social media. In the clip, Fox host Bill Hemmer says, “New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani filing a new appeal after a judge temporarily blocked the rollout of Mayor Z’s controversial tax on luxury second homes. It’s all about more revenue, and Alexis McAdams is on it. She’s live here in New York with more. Where do we stand, Alexis? What’s next?”
“Yeah, so this New York judge who is a Democrat, important to note that ruling the Mamdani administration made a big mistake with the rollout of this pied-a-terre tax by putting the burden on the taxpayers here. So Mayor Mamdani had promised this tax would target the rich,” McAdams goes on to say in the clip.
“He rolled out all of those videos saying to check your mail. Well, it was supposed to only impact people of multi-million dollar second homes in New York City, but that’s not what happened. So three New York City homeowners sued, challenging the city’s rollout of this tax, saying that their primary homes were on this list,” McAdams explained in her report.
“And the judge, who, as I mentioned, is a Democrat, ruled in their favor and told the city to remove the list of the addresses and names that were posted online, telling the city it should have done the work to find what homeowners actually qualified, not just putting everyone on the list and saying, ‘Prove you don’t owe the money,'” McAdams continued. “Their attorney spoke yesterday outside a court and said the judge protected thousands of New Yorkers.”
The setback for the Mamdani tax came after the attorney, Randy Mastro, slammed the administration for the botched rollout of a surcharge that targeted second homes that are valued at over $5 million. “The city screwed this up… got it wrong… stop the train and make them do it over,” Mastro said to the court. According to Fox News, Mastro said the city’s first order of business should have been to determine if properties actually qualified as non-primary residents before issuing the surcharge.
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Rather than do that, he stated that the administration published a property roll that featured a large number of properties and sent notices that left homeowners in the Big Apple panicking as they tried to prove their homes were their primary residences. “The city is to bear the burden,” Mastro said in court. “They didn’t do their homework.”