Mayor Adams vetoes bill that’d make it easier for gender violence victims to sue

As one of his final acts in office, Mayor Adams on Christmas Eve vetoed a City Council bill that would temporarily allow victims of gender-based violence to sue their perpetrators even if the statute of limitations for their claim has expired.

The veto, which Adams issued just a week before leaving office Dec. 31, came even though the City Council unanimously passed the bill 48-0 last month.

The Council has 30 days to override the mayor’s veto. Three-quarters of the House’s 51 members would need to support an override for it to succeed.

The author of the gender-based violence bill, Queens Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers, said in a statement Wednesday evening that the House “must” next month “override this callous veto and restore the rights of survivors to seek accountability.”

“By vetoing Intro 1297 on Christmas Eve, the Mayor is offering a cruel ‘gift’ to survivors of gender-based violence: a message that their right to seek justice can wait,” Brooks-Powers said. “This veto shows that Mayor Adams is once again bowing to big and powerful interests while turning his back on vulnerable New Yorkers.”

The Council will reconvene in early January for another session, with Manhattan City Councilwoman Julie Menin set to be sworn in as the Council’s next president. Menin did not immediately return messages asking what his plans might be regarding a possible override of Adams’ latest veto.

The Brooks-Powers bill, first introduced last May, would reopen an 18-month window for alleged victims of gender-based violence to file civil lawsuits for crimes committed before Jan. 9, 2022. A previous version of the Gender-Based Violence Act, which temporarily allowed such victims to file lawsuits after the statute of limitations, lapsed earlier this year.

The bill was developed after hundreds of former juvenile detainees who tried to sue New York City for alleged sexual abuse while incarcerated had their cases thrown out this year because a judge ruled that the law as originally written did not allow their claims to move forward. The bill is not limited to allowing these victims to file complaints, but applies to anyone alleging gender-based violence.

In a statement to the Daily News, Adams said he vetoed the bill because he was concerned about the motives of a law firm that represented alleged juvenile victims in custody.

“Domestic violence is a serious crime and perpetrators of this act of violence must be held accountable and brought to justice, but this bill would allow a single law firm that pressured Speaker (Adrienne) Adams and the City Council to pocket up to $300 million in taxpayer dollars while reviving claims that have already been rejected,” the mayor’s statement said. “This is not justice but a boon for a sophisticated law firm reaping hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of survivors as well as all New York taxpayers. Our office even tried to work with the City Council to secure compensation for survivors of domestic violence and limit attorney fees for this firm alone, but they refused to engage.”

Jerome Block, an attorney at Levy Konigsberg LLP, the law firm criticized by Adams, predicted that the Council would override the veto and that survivors who fought for the bill’s passage “will ultimately prevail.”

“With its unanimous 48-0 vote, the City Council recognized that Intro 1297 is necessary to give survivors a fair path to justice,” Block said in a statement. “This includes survivors of sexual abuse in juvenile detention centers, survivors sexually assaulted by doctors in major New York hospitals, and survivors of sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein.

“These survivors are represented by numerous law firms across the city who take pride in their work representing survivors. Any effort by Mayor Adams to attack attorneys is a transparent effort to distract from his callous veto that attempts to strip survivors of their legal rights.”

Another law passed at the state level in 2022, the Adult Survivors Act, allowed victims of sex offenses to sue their perpetrators for a period of time, even if their claims were statute-barred.

Lorna Beach-Mathura, a former NYPD employee, sued Mayor Adams in early 2024 under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging that he sexually assaulted her while they both served in the police department in the early 1990s. This suit remains ongoing, and Adams has vehemently denied Beach-Mathura’s accusations.

The Christmas Eve maneuver comes as Adams may decide in his final days to veto several other housing development-related bills that the Council passed last week. After these bills passed, Adams’ office sharply criticized them and said the mayor would reconsider his options.

Adams, a moderate conservative Democrat whose first and only term was marred by his own indictment and other corruption scandals, has had a rocky relationship with the City Council throughout his tenure at City Hall.

He has vetoed Council bills related to everything from police transparency to housing subsidies. In almost all cases, the Council ignored him, forcing the measures into law despite his objections.

Adams’ successor, Zohran Mamdani, will be sworn in as the next mayor on January 1.