Judge halts Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax and orders city to pull 900,000-name homeowner list

A Staten Island judge blocked Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax rollout and ordered the city to take down a massive online database of homeowners, a sharp rebuke of an implementation that critics say punished ordinary New Yorkers for City Hall's failure to do its own homework.

Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi issued a temporary restraining order on Monday siding with three homeowners who sued the city last Friday over what their lawsuit called a rollout that "caused mass confusion." The order bars the city from taking any action based on the published list or on 17,000 notices already mailed to property owners warning them they could face five-figure tax bills. It also requires the city to pull down an online database listing roughly 900,000 taxpayers, a list the Mamdani administration had published as part of its effort to put wealthy second-home owners "on notice." The restrictions hold at least until an Aug. 31 hearing.

The ruling lands squarely on a rollout that managed to unite homeowners, a sitting city councilman's family, and even a self-described Mamdani supporter against City Hall. And it raises a pointed question: how did a tax aimed at multimillion-dollar pieds-à-terre end up dragging nearly a million ordinary homeowners into a bureaucratic scramble?

City published 900,000 names without checking who actually owed the tax

State lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul approved the pied-à-terre surcharge in the spring. The tax targets one- to three-family homes worth at least $5 million and co-ops and condos valued at $1 million or more that serve as unoccupied, non-primary residences. The Washington Examiner reported that the surcharge rates range from 0.8% to 6.5%, with the tax projected to generate $500 million a year for the city.

Hochul had championed the measure as a way to make "Russian oligarchs" and "Saudi princes" pay their fair share. But the city's Department of Finance did not limit its rollout to oligarchs and princes. It published a database of approximately 900,000 homeowners, a figure that dwarfs any reasonable estimate of luxury second-home owners in the five boroughs, and mailed 17,000 notices telling recipients they could owe a new tax unless they filed for an exemption.

The lawsuit, filed by attorney Randy Mastro on behalf of three homeowners, Rachel O'Brien, Carmine Morano, and Simon Hedley, argued that city officials ignored "the plethora of state data that the new law specifically granted them to make a thorough assessment of who could be eligible." Instead, the suit alleged, officials "unfairly foisted that burden onto longtime New Yorkers, many of whom scrambled to prove their bona-fides by an initially-set one-month deadline."

Mastro, a former first deputy mayor under Mayor Eric Adams, has tangled with the Mamdani administration before. Mamdani himself acknowledged as much before the ruling, joking: "There are a few things more certain in New York City than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration." The mayor was not laughing afterward.

Ozzi found the city, not homeowners, bore the burden of proof

Fox News reported that Justice Ozzi found the city caused irreparable harm by publishing names, addresses, and property values of more than 900,000 homeowners without first making the individualized determinations required under state tax law. The court concluded that the city, not the homeowners, bore the burden of making those initial assessments, and that it had improperly shifted that obligation onto the very people it was taxing.

The judge also found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their case. That finding undercuts the city's own court filing, submitted Monday before the ruling, in which city lawyers argued the three homeowners "have not raised any legally actionable claim or identified any irreparable injury."

The city's lawyers had also warned that pausing the September 18 appeals deadline "may lull taxpayers into delaying their filings, and that in turn may mean that those delayed administrative appeals cannot be processed in time to be reflected in the November 15 bills." In other words, City Hall's argument for keeping the train on the tracks was that stopping it now would make the mess worse, an argument that conceded the mess existed.

By the time the city filed its response, the Department of Finance had already received 3,801 submissions from homeowners challenging the agency's determination of their primary residence. City lawyers acknowledged in-progress appeals could total nearly 8,000. Those numbers suggest that thousands of New Yorkers who live in their own homes were incorrectly flagged as potential pied-à-terre owners, and forced to prove otherwise on a tight deadline.

Mamdani's administration has faced sustained public backlash on multiple fronts since taking office, and this rollout did nothing to ease tensions with the homeowners who make up the city's tax base.

Mastro: 'The city screwed this up'

After the ruling, Mastro did not hold back. He told reporters:

"We are very gratified by the judge's decision, which has vindicated the rights of hundreds of thousands of New York City homeowners who were subjected to a process they never should have been a part of in the first place."

In separate remarks reported by Just The News, Mastro was blunter: "The city screwed this up... got it wrong... stop the train and make them do it over. The city is to bear the burden. They didn't do their homework."

The three plaintiffs themselves illustrate how far the rollout overreached. O'Brien and Morano, the wife and father, respectively, of City Councilman Frank Morano, are Staten Island residents whose homes appeared on the published list. Hedley, a Chelsea resident and self-described Mamdani supporter, received one of the 17,000 mailed notices. He uploaded his tax return on Saturday, and his appeal was approved, confirming that his home was, in fact, his primary residence and that the notice never should have gone out.

Reached by the New York Post after the ruling, Hedley struck a measured tone: "I understand it's still the end of the month, so there's not a whole lot of uh time. Hopefully, they can take the opportunity to roll things out a bit more smoothly."

That a Mamdani supporter had to hire a lawyer and join a lawsuit just to stop the city from taxing the home he lives in tells you everything about how this rollout was handled.

Hochul distances herself as City Hall vows to fight

Gov. Hochul, speaking to reporters at an unrelated event in the Bronx before the ruling came down, tried to put distance between Albany and the debacle. "We're not responsible for the rollout," she said. "This is something that we talked to the city about in advance. It's up to their city tax department."

She added that she would "encourage City Hall to try and streamline this." After Justice Ozzi's order, a Hochul spokesperson issued a more carefully worded statement: "While this lawsuit about the administration of the tax is a matter for the city and the courts to work through, the Governor continues to believe that people who can afford a multimillion-dollar second home in New York City can afford to pay their fair share."

The governor's pivot was notable. Hochul championed the tax as a tool to squeeze foreign billionaires. When the implementation swept up nearly a million ordinary homeowners, she pointed at City Hall and stepped back. The pattern is familiar: Albany writes the mandate, the city botches the execution, and elected officials up the chain wash their hands of it.

Meanwhile, the Mamdani administration has shown no sign of rethinking its approach. Spokesman Matt Rauschenbach issued a statement insisting the city would press ahead: "We disagree with today's ruling, but we are confident in both the pied-à-terre surcharge and the City's ability to implement it fairly and effectively." He added that "the Law Department will appeal the ruling immediately which will stay the order, and the City will continue with the pied-a-terre's implementation."

Rauschenbach framed the surcharge as asking "those who own second homes valued at $5 million or more to contribute their fair share to the city they benefit from." That framing conveniently omits the 900,000 homeowners who do not own $5 million second homes but found their names, addresses, and property values posted on a city website anyway.

City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov offered a sharper assessment. "This is Marxism in practice," she said, "consistently promising to better the lives of the middle class by punishing the wealthy." Whether or not one accepts that characterization, the rollout did manage to punish people who are not wealthy, a recurring theme in the Mamdani administration's approach to housing policy.

900,000 homeowners exposed, and the city says it did nothing wrong

The most striking element of the city's legal position was its insistence that publishing the names and property values of 900,000 homeowners caused no "irreparable injury." City lawyers argued in their filing that the plaintiffs had "not raised any legally actionable claim" related to removing the list from the city's website. Justice Ozzi disagreed.

The published database, which the city's own court filing referred to as a "rent roll", contained personal information for homeowners across all five boroughs, the vast majority of whom were never plausible targets of a luxury second-home surcharge. For those homeowners, the city's message was clear: prove you live in your own house, or face a new tax bill. The burden fell on retirees, families, and longtime residents who had done nothing wrong.

The administration's growing record of administrative missteps makes the city's confidence in its own competence harder to credit. And the fact that Mamdani "quickly promised to fight the ruling", rather than acknowledge that flagging 900,000 homeowners for a tax meant for a fraction of that number was a failure, suggests the administration views the court's intervention as a political obstacle, not a legitimate check.

The next hearing is set for Aug. 31. Until then, the list stays down, the notices sit in limbo, and nearly a million New Yorkers wait to find out whether the city will be forced to do what it should have done from the start: figure out who actually owes the tax before demanding that everyone else prove they don't.

A government that already faces organized calls for its leader to resign might consider treating its own residents as something other than guilty until proven innocent. But that would require a kind of humility this administration has yet to demonstrate.

When your tax on the ultra-rich manages to harass 900,000 ordinary homeowners, the problem is not the judge who stopped you. The problem is you.