In Court, At Least, the Feds Are Not Trying To Stop Congestion Pricing

Legal professionals for the U.S. Division of Transportation are usually not planning to hunt an emergency order to halt congestion pricing if the toll retains going after April 20, the Trump administration’s present deadline for Gov. Hochul to finish the toll, in keeping with a brand new courtroom submitting.

In a letter to Choose Lewis Liman, who’s overseeing the MTA’s lawsuit difficult Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s bid to withdraw federal approval of the toll, MTA legal professional Roberta Kaplan mentioned that federal legal professionals mentioned they do not plan on asking for an emergency injunction ought to the deadline come and go.

“The MTA … specifically asked whether the federal defendants contemplate taking any unilateral action on or after April 20 that might require plaintiffs to seek expedited injunctive relief,” Kaplan wrote. “The federal defendants … did state that, at present, they do not intend to seek preliminary injunctive relief themselves.”

The choice to not search an injunction when the MTA blows previous the double secret probation deadline Duffy introduced after the company ignored his authentic March 20 deadline signifies that congestion pricing can be sticking round at the very least by means of the summer season, based mostly on the submitting schedule on which the plaintiffs and defendants agreed, in keeping with Kaplan’s letter.

Per that schedule, the federal authorities will not flip over the executive file till Might 27, seven weeks from now. The executive file, a set of each communication and doc a authorities company has in its possession to reveal the way it got here to decide, is essential in lawsuits centered round violations of administrative process, because the MTA’s swimsuit in opposition to Duffy is.

Often the executive file is the one doc a choose is meant to make use of to find out whether or not an company acted rationally when making an administrative resolution. Besides there’s one flaw: Duffy and his crew haven’t acted rationally; Kaplan’s letter mentioned that federal legal professionals steered there truly isn’t any administrative file between the day Duffy took workplace and the day he despatched his letter demanding an finish to the toll.

“Counsel for the federal defendants were unable to confirm … whether the administrative record will include any documents, beyond Defendant Duffy’s Feb. 19 letter, for the period after Defendant Duffy took office on Jan. 28, 2025,” Kaplan wrote.

For his or her half, U.S. DOT legal professionals mentioned it was too early to speak about emergency motions as a result of nothing has been accomplished to require one.

“Plaintiffs’ articulation of a potential need for expedited injunctive relief is premature,” the federal legal professionals mentioned, in keeping with Kaplan’s letter. “This issue is not currently before the Court and therefore the government does not take any position in response at this time.”

It is not unusual for circumstances like this to maneuver slowly. For example, when New Jersey sued the Federal Freeway Administration over congestion pricing it took nearly 4 months for the Backyard State to file a movement for abstract judgment — and the federal authorities did not reply with its personal argument for abstract judgment till one other month after that. However the behind-the-scenes authorized filings paint a a lot completely different image than the showy calls for by President Trump to finish the toll and the makes an attempt by Duffy to power the MTA to finish the toll on the snap of his fingers.

After Gov. Hochul made it clear that the state wouldn’t adjust to the order to cease congestion pricing, Duffy has tried to look answerable for the state of affairs by releasing propaganda movies, calling the subway a “shithole,” making an attempt to color the subway as an uncontrolled hellscape and taking a widely-mocked two-stop subway trip on Friday. Transit advocates have been unimpressed by the antics

“Secretary Duffy has no idea what he’s talking about and his MetroCard 101 stunt was the latest example of that,” mentioned Riders Alliance Director of Coverage and Communication Danny Pearlstein. “Congestion pricing is working phenomenally well and we’re certain by the summer it will have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to repair subway, and especially in the summer will improve our air quality.”

Either side within the trial are scheduled to speak throughout a pretrial phone convention on Wednesday, throughout which they’ll additional talk about the schedule revealed in Kaplan’s letter.