New York Law Blog

We get a lot of people who come to our firm for various reasons. While in many cases we can meet their needs for situations involving accidents, injuries, malpractice, negligence, worker’s compensation and much more, there are some instances like immigration and criminal cases where other existing organizations are best suited for them. Below is a list of the most common referrals we provide.

• Studentjobs.gov Career Center
• DHS: Immigration
• Free Legal Services Providers for New York
• Guide to Attorney Disciplinary Procedures in New York State
• Mexican Non Profit Organizations
• New York City Civil Court / Small Claims
• New York City Family Court
• New York Lemon Law
• New York State Department of Family Assistance
• New York State Department of Health
• Social Security Online
• Teen & Parent Crisis Hotline

An interesting piece ran in the New York Times’ NY/Region section highlights a little known law regarding citizens who have previously been incarcerated and acquiring trade licenses once they are released. Marc La Cloche spent eleven years in New York prisons for robbery charges. While he was incarcerated, Mr. La Cloche studied barbering and when released applied for a license to do so with the state. When the state discovered he possessed a “criminal history”, he was declined the license. Mr. La Cloche fought the denial in the court system, but has since passed away. Since then, members of the New York state assembly have taken up the issue and are now working on bills to reverse the law.

With Mr. La Cloche in mind, they [State Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Assemblyman Michael Benjamin] introduced bills to forbid the state to deny a license to a would-be barber or cosmetologist just because of an applicant’s criminal record. Barbering and cosmetology were singled out because they are skills valued both in prison and in the neighborhoods to which many inmates return, once freed.

“You can’t transfer making highway signs and garbage bins to the community because there’s no industry out here for them,” Ms. Montgomery said. “But for cosmetology and barbering, there is. It’s also a skill that can be translated into a small-business opportunity.”

Some state officials didn’t like the bills. When they were passed by the Legislature last year, Gov. Eliot Spitzer vetoed them. One argument against them was that discrimination based solely on a criminal record is already forbidden by the state’s Correction Law.

But as we all know, and as the La Cloche case showed, what is law and what is reality do not always walk hand in hand. The Community Service Society, an antipoverty group, said during last year’s debate that it had detected a pattern of denying licenses to former inmates based on “spurious concerns over ‘character’ that can only be attributed to bias related to their criminal record.”

The bill to reverse the previous law was recently sent to Governor David Patterson which he signed.

Following up yesterday’s post on term limit laws for New York City, the New York Sun has some further interesting insight into the current law in the books and the proposed changes. According to the Sun voters in New York City have not once, but twice voted on term limits of city officials that would only give them two terms. Here are some of the key bits of information from the very informative article:

As a legal matter, there is little doubt that Mr. Bloomberg can have his way. In 1993, New York City voters first approved a ballot initiative to impose a two-term limit on all local elected offices. Then, in 1998, they rejected a ballot initiative to overturn those limits. The fact that term limits were born at the ballot box does not mean, though, that they remain the exclusive province of the voters.

Under New York law, the city’s charter can be changed by legislation, even after voter ratification, with one exception. The city’s charter cannot be changed by legislation if the amendment in question alters the powers of an elective office or the "term of office." Here’s the catch: New York courts have interpreted "term in office" to mean only the number of years in a single term, not the number of terms of an elected office.

So Mr. Bloomberg could legally seek legislation to permit him to run for a third term. And the City Council would undoubtedly accommodate him — as long as councilmembers got the same deal for themselves.

The rest of the article, titled “Bloomberg’s Choice”, has interesting legal opinion on the matter from Randy Mastro. You can read it

in full here

, and let us know what you think in the comments section below.