Judge Greenlights de Blasio Document Shredding

A New York judge has ruled against a pair of Republican state legislators who challenged a move by New York City officials to destroy documents used by illegal immigrants and others to obtain city identification cards.

State Assembly members Ronald Castorina Jr. and Nicole Malliotakis filed an open-records request and then sued last year when they learned the city was going to destroy the documents. Castorina and Malliotakis have expressed concern that lax standards for the IDNYC cards could allow terrorists to access the banking system.

“Notwithstanding these positions, this Court cannot make new law based upon a political party’s agenda.”

The lawmakers wanted to find out how often applicants use documentation such as expired military IDs from foreign countries. Nearly a million people have been given cards, which the city touted as an alternative for illegal immigrants, the homeless, and others who do not have other forms of ID.

Judge Philip Minardo on Friday denied the request by the lawmakers to preserve the documents, casting their request in political terms.

“Much ado was made about the recent federal election of a Republican President with an immigration agenda and petitioners’ support of the President and the very public opposition of certain respondents,” the judge wrote. “Notwithstanding these positions, this Court cannot make new law based upon a political party’s agenda.”

Jeffrey Alfano, a lawyer for Castorina and Malliotakis, said the legislators would appeal. He said it was the city that tried to make the dispute about politics.

“They were trying to cast Assembly members Castorina and Malliotakis in the same light as white supremacists and neo-Nazis,” he said.

Alfano also noted that Minardo blocked efforts to call Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to the stand to explain their public comments that they were moving to destroy documents out of fear that President Donald Trump might try to use them to deport illegal immigrants.

“That’s not how we govern in the United States,” Alfano said.

The judge based his decision on his conclusion that Castorina and Malliotakis could not demonstrate a specific harm they would suffer if the city destroyed the records. He noted that they alleged that the decision to destroy records undermined a state mandate that they be preserved.

“However, raising that issue, is not in itself an injury,” Minardo wrote. “Petitioners cannot simply raise a grievance on behalf of society, they must show a nexus to their rights and harm by the decision.”

But Alfano noted that the judge took testimony from several witnesses over days. Typically, Alfano said, judges decide so-called “standing” challenges base on written arguments before taking live testimony.

Alfano argued that Minardo used the wrong standard. He said the judge applied a standard used for discovery in civil cases, not for an open records case. He said the judge’s decision deals mostly with the state Freedom of Information Law request, not with the legislators’ challenge to the city’s planned destruction of documents.

He said his clients merely wanted to stop the city from destroying the records and have not even decided whether to appeal the city’s decision to turn down the FOIL request, itself.

“It doesn’t address the actual motion that was before the court,” he said. “This is what makes it such a weird, weird decision.”

The city argued it would be laborious and costly to provide the records that ID card applicants used to get the IDNYC cards because workers would have to go through them and black out identifying information that could violate the privacy of applicants. The city estimated that it would cost $6 million and that it could not guarantee that private information would not be released by mistake.

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Minardo seemed to buy those arguments, as well as the city’s contention that the information sought by the lawmakers would be of no value.

“It would be nonsensical for this Court to order such an outrageous expenditure without a concrete propose for the documents which would be redacted in large part,” he wrote.

Alfano pointed out that since January 1, the city has not even been keeping copies of the documentation that IDNYC applicants use to obtain the IDs. He said it is important to know the countries where the applicants are coming from and kinds of documents that they use in order to spot possible patterns. He said that can be accomplished without violating anyone’s privacy.

“We just want to know where it’s coming from,” he said.