Trump’s transportation department is not planning to sue if the MTA blows through Secretary Sean Duffy’s deadlines to end the state’s congestion pricing program, new court filings reveal.
The filings come as Duffy has repeatedly talked — and tweeted — tough, threatening funding to the transit agency and deriding Gov. Hochul’s “disrespect towards the federal government.”
In a letter filed to the docket in the MTA’s lawsuit to save the program, Roberta Kaplan, an attorney for the transit agency, said she’s been in discussions with lawyers for the federal government as both sides seek to schedule the case.
“The MTA … specifically asked whether the federal defendants contemplate taking any unilateral action on or after [the current deadline of] April 20 that might require plaintiffs to seek expedited injunctive relief,” Kaplan wrote to federal judge Lewis Liman, who is hearing the MTA’s challenge in Manhattan federal court.
Kaplan said the feds replied “that, at present, they do not intend to seek preliminary injunctive relief themselves.”
In other words, even if the MTA misses the arbitrary deadline for ending congestion pricing imposed by Duffy, lawyers for the federal government are not planning to sue to stop the toll ahead of the conclusion of the case.
Based on a schedule for the proceedings proposed by Kaplan — and agreed to, she said, by the feds — the case could extend into October.
What basis, if any, the federal government may have to revoke a previously granted authorization and end a state-run program mandated by state law remains unclear.
Duffy first sought to end the toll in February, declaring that his department had revoked a key federal authorization granted by the Biden administration last year — despite explicit guidelines in the authorization that only the state of New York can reverse it. The MTA sued in Manhattan federal court the same day.
Duffy’s department then issued a letter, demanding New York “cease the collection of tolls” by March 21.
But on March 20, he walked it back, announcing in an angrily-worded tweet that he was extending his deadline 30 days — to April 20.
Amid the shifting deadlines, Duffy has also threatened to cut off federal funding to the MTA, which receives roughly $2 billion in capital funding a year from Washington.
The transportation secretary has tied this threat to his claims that crime is on the rise in the New York City subway system, despite NYPD stats showing crime at a decade low.
Duffy doubled down last week, threatening to “offer” DOGE — Elon Musk’s para-governmental firing-squad — to the MTA after encountering a mentally-ill person during a two-stop subway ride.
In her letter to the court, Kaplan said Duffy “appeared to suggest that [the feds] may consider improperly withholding federal funds from the State of New York, as the Trump Administration has done in many other recent cases, in order to coerce compliance with its demands.”
She went on to say that the MTA and other state and municipal agencies “will act swiftly to assert their rights should the federal government improperly withhold funds or otherwise illegally retaliate against them for commencing this litigation.”
