(C) Common Dreams
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LaSalle Is Rejected by New York Senate Panel in a 10-9 Vote [1]
['Luis Ferré-Sadurní', 'Jesse Mckinley']
Date: 2023-01-18
A floor vote could arguably favor Ms. Hochul, who would have greater flexibility to cobble together enough votes from Democrats and even some Republicans in the minority to confirm Justice LaSalle.
Senate Democrats have defended the committee vote — the process routinely used to move legislation to the floor — by arguing that the Senate can determine its own procedural rules, especially since the Constitution does not explicitly say a candidate must be voted on by the full State Senate.
In explaining his vote against Justice LaSalle, Senator Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat from Brooklyn, used a baseball analogy, saying that “It’s not just whether a judge can call balls and strikes, but more importantly it’s how they view the strike zone.”
“After reviewing Judge LaSalle’s record in case after case, I believe that he has a conservative view of what the strike zone is,” he said.
Many Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about a 2015 defamation case where Justice LaSalle and a majority of the appellate court held that while state law prohibits companies from suing unions and their representatives for labor-related activities, such lawsuits are allowed if companies can show that the representatives were acting in their personal capacity.
“Any suggestion that I’m anti-union or anti-labor is absolutely untrue,” Justice LaSalle said, adding that he “agreed full heartedly with the concept that big business should not be using litigation to chill the voices of organized labor.”
In his line of questioning, Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat from Manhattan who chairs the Judiciary Committee, sought to tie Justice LaSalle to Ms. DiFiore, who was reviled by many Democrats, noting cases in which she had reached the same conclusion as Justice LaSalle.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/nyregion/chief-judge-lasalle-hearing.html
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