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COURIER L 22 IFE, JULY 24-30, 2020
Unions protest outside of Brooklyn Supreme Court on July 20. Photo by Ben Verde
OVERRULED
Unions ask city to keep courts closed
BY BEN VERDE
Unions representing court workers
and legal aid attorneys are calling on
the city to hit the brakes on in-person
court proceedings, arguing that they
put workers, judges, and defendants at
risk of contracting COVID-19.
At a rally and march outside Brooklyn
Supreme Court on Monday, July
20, members of 1199 SEIU, which represents
paralegals and clerical workers,
and UAW2325, the union of Legal
Aid attorneys and defender services
slammed the city for its rush to reopen
criminal and housing courts in July, a
decision union members accused of being
rooted in racism.
“It’s funny, but emphatically not
funny, that the day we found out they
wanted to reopen housing court for
these trials, the mayor was painting
a Black Lives Matter mural the next
borough over,” said Jared Trujillo, a
Legal Aid attorney and UAW member.
“If gyms are not open, if restaurants
are not open to protect wealthy and
white New Yorkers, why are we peddling
Black and brown New Yorkers
through housing court and through
criminal court?”
Mayor Bill de Blasio has repeatedly
claimed closed court systems
are responsible for a citywide spike in
violent crime, as has Police Commissioner
Dermot Shea. Criminal courts
are slated to resume grand jury proceedings
and other criminal proceedings
in person on August 10. Housing
court is slated to reopen for in-person
proceedings on July 27, a move tenants
rights activists have decried.
“We owe it to our communities
and we owe it to our police offi cers
to restart our court system as vigorously
as possible and as quickly
as possible,” de Blasio said during a
press briefi ng on July 16. “So please
hear our plea because that’s how we
keep our communities safe.”
Since mid-March when the city
shut down the criminal court system
has conducted 19,000 virtual arraignments,
34,000 additional criminal
proceedings and over 600 felony
preliminary hearings, the New York
Post reported.
A spokesman for the Unifi ed
Court System defended their reopening
strategy, pointing out that all reopening
plans had been vetted by an
epidemiologist, defender services had
been included on walkthroughs of the
court buildings, and that all counties
outside of New York City had already
resumed in-person appearances.
“Our careful, incremental, and
measured resumption of in-person
operations in courthouses throughout
the state gas been both deliberative
and transparent,” said Lucian
Chalfen. “What these protesters are
asking for is the court system to regress,
offering no solutions only demands.”
Union attorneys say they don’t
think there is a way to safely reopen
the courts before a vaccine is developed,
and that the city should focus
on honing its virtual proceedings system
rather than rush a reopening.
“It just goes completely against
CDC guidelines,” Legal Aid attorney
Bri Guzman told Brooklyn Paper.
“There are a lot of ways we can do
this virtually, and the courts are just
tired because they have realized that
they are inadequate when it comes to
virtual proceedings — but that’s not
our fault! They need to get their operations
in order.”
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