UNION REPRESENTING CITY EMPLOYEES HAS STANDING TO CONTEST THE CREATION OF A NEW CITY DEPARTMENT AFFECTING THOSE EMPLOYEES (THIRD DEPT).

The Third Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined the labor union representing employees of the city’s Office of the Building Inspector and Bureau of Code Enforcement had standing to contest an executive order issued by the mayor and related regulations which created a new Building Department:

“[S]tanding is a threshold determination and a litigant must establish standing in order to seek judicial review, with the burden of establishing standing being on the party seeking review” … . A petitioner challenging governmental action must “show ‘injury in fact,’ meaning that [the petitioner] will actually be harmed by the challenged [governmental] action[,]” and, further, that the injury “fall[s] within the zone of interests or concerns sought to be promoted or protected by the statutory provision under which the [governmental entity] has acted” … . For an organization to have standing, it must establish “‘that at least one of its members would have standing to sue, that it is representative of the organizational purposes it asserts and that the case would not require the participation of individual members'” … .

Petitioners allege that the Mayor unlawfully engaged in a legislative act by creating the Buildings Department and that this unlawful legislative act brought the union’s members under the auspices/jurisdiction of the Commissioner, who used that unlawful grant of authority to enact a regulation that respondents have relied on to supplant the members’ negotiated rights regarding disciplinary proceedings, as set forth in the applicable collective bargaining agreement. In our view, these allegations would, if proven, demonstrate the requisite harm flowing from the executive order, which would fall within the zone of interests … . Matter of Civil Serv. Empls. Assn., Inc., Local 1000, AFSCME, AFL-CIO v City of Schenectady, 2019 NY Slip Op 09342, Thrid Dept 12-26-19