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Read the M.T.A.’s Lawsuit Against Federal Officials Over Congestion Pricing [1]
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Date: 2025-02-19
Case 1:25-cv-01413 Document 1 Filed 02/19/25 Page 10 of 51 Secretary. At a conference of state highway and transportation officials on February 5, 2025, Defendant Duffy stated that he wanted to commit to create projects that “mak[e] peoples lives better. What you do makes people's lives better. We're able to get to work and back home to see our loved ones more quickly. If we don't have our systems that are delayed and we don't sit in traffic we get to spend an extra 15 minutes, maybe an extra 45 minutes a day with the ones that we love as opposed to listening to music or a podcast or, I don't know what you listen to in the car, but whatever you're listening to in the car, or on the train. We can make people's lives better and spend time with the people we love as opposed to going to the grind of our transportation system.” "13 24. In addition to being inconsistent with its own broader policy statements, the Trump Administration's efforts to "terminate” the Program are contrary to its purported respect for federalism. The Program is the first congestion pricing program of its kind in the United States, and a necessary solution to the unique policy challenges facing the New York metropolitan region and one that reflects the will of the majority of New Yorkers and their elected representatives at every level of government. As Justice Brandeis explained nearly a century ago, “[i]t is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 597 n.20 (1977) (quoting New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J. dissenting)). President Trump claims to embrace this philosophy and has even pledged, in his own signature way, to "make states the laboratories of "14 democracy once again.” In his first inaugural address, President Trump declared that “we are not 13 Sean Duffy, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy speaks at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials 2025 Washington Briefing, U.S. Dep't of Transp. (Feb. 5. 2025),
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-secretary-transportation-sean-duffy-speaks-american-association- state-highway-and. 14 Michael Stratford, Trump Endorses States' Rights - but Only When He Agrees With the State, POLITICO (Apr. 2, 2018),
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/02/trump-states-rights-education-sanctuary-drilling-492784. 10
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/19/nyregion/mta-congestion-pricing-lawsuit.html
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