Republish this article

Will Hector LaSalle Be the Next Janet DiFiore?

Story and multimedia republishing rules

All our stories are published under Creative Commons, meaning that you are free to copy and distribute in your publication.
You may edit material to reflect relative changes in time, location and in-house style (for example, changing “yesterday” to “last week.”) If you’d like to make more substantive edits, like condensing stories, please run them by alex@nysfocus.com before publishing.
Bylines should credit New York Focus, in this format: “By [name of reporter], New York Focus”
Include the following language at the top of the story, with a link to our newsletter:

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Please link back to our original story in the attribution line as well and include all hyperlinks from the original piece in the republished version.
If you share the story on social media, please mention @nysfocus (Twitter/X, Bluesky, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok).
Don’t sell the story or any part of it — it may not be marketed as a product.
Don’t extract, store or resell New York Focus content as a database.
Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
You must obtain permission to package additional elements with our story and must label them.
You can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements, but only with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use. If you’re having trouble accessing visual elements, let us know.
If we send you a request to change or remove New York Focus content from your site, you must do so immediately.

For questions regarding the New York Focus publishing rules, or if you are a journalist or news organization that wants to join our partner list, please contact Alex Arriaga, Audience Engagement Editor, at alex@nysfocus.com.

This story originally appeared in <a href="https://nysfocus.com/2023/01/05/hector-lasalle-janet-difiore-appeals-court">New York Focus</a>, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. <a href="https://nysfocus.com/newsletter?utm_source=partner&utm_medium=website" target="_blank">Sign up for their newsletter here</a>.<hr>CRIMINAL JUSTICE · January 5, 2023
<h1>Will Hector LaSalle Be the Next Janet DiFiore?</h1>
<h2>LaSalle’s supporters argue opponents are cherry-picking his record. But on eight out of nine recent cases, he agreed with the Court of Appeals’ conservative bloc.</h2>
<h3>By <a class="yellow-underline" href="https://nysfocus.com/author/sam-mellins">Sam Mellins</a> , New York Focus</h3><figure><img src="https://imgproxy.gridwork.co/S9mvMDOwhfKxUUM2YqAfO5Jjws8DuzIIx8oS-o0vSWs/w:820/h:362/rt:fill/g:fp:0.5:0.5/q:90/el:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9zMy51cy1lYXN0LTIuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9ueXNmb2N1cy9IZWN0b3ItTGFTYWxsZS5wbmc.png" alt="" /><figcaption>Judge Hector LaSalle / Unified Court System</figcaption></figure><div>GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL’S nominee for chief judge of New York’s highest court is on thin ice. Fourteen Democratic state senators have announced their opposition to confirming Judge Hector LaSalle as the next head of the Court of Appeals, leaving him in need of Republican support to win confirmation in the Democratic-supermajority state Senate. 
Much of the opposition to LaSalle centers around <a href="https://nysfocus.com/2022/12/19/chief-judge-court-of-appeals-hector-lasalle/">two decisions</a> he signed on to at the mid-level appeals court where he now serves. Multiple senators, reproductive rights groups, and at least six labor unions — including the powerful 32BJ SEIU — have cited these decisions to explain their opposition, arguing that they are anti-labor and anti-reproductive freedom. They predict that LaSalle would join the <a href="https://nysfocus.com/2022/07/07/court-of-appeals-conservative-bloc/">conservative bloc</a> that has recently controlled the court, but whose grip was threatened when former Chief Judge Janet DiFiore <a href="https://nysfocus.com/2022/07/12/difiore-resignation-court-of-appeals/">unexpectedly resigned</a> this summer. 
“You’ve got 5,000 cases to go through and cherry-picking this or that can always be done to sandbag anyone,” said New York Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs, a vocal supporter of Hochul’s pick. Speaking to New York Focus, he pointed to other cases where LaSalle ruled in favor of <a href="https://casetext.com/case/perrotta-v-syosset-cent-sch-dist">labor</a> and <a href="https://casetext.com/case/people-v-palencia-2">criminal defendants</a>. “What people need to understand is that judges don’t make the law, judges interpret the law.” 
But there’s another reason some observers <a href="https://twitter.com/TweetsByMahtin/status/1610455780553261057?s=20&t=BzVxs2HUT7jkxca5NqG6MA">predict</a> LaSalle would tend to agree with the court’s conservative bloc: In eight out of nine recent cases, he already has. 
LaSalle has heard <a href="https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2022/2022_01954.htm">two</a> <a href="https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2022/2022_01866.htm">cases</a> as part of the Court of Appeals, thanks to a provision in the <a href="https://dos.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2022/01/Constitution-January-1-2022.pdf">state constitution</a> that allows lower court judges to sub in when one of the high court’s judges recuses themself. In both cases, LaSalle voted with DiFiore and the conservative bloc she led. In one case, White v. Cuomo, LaSalle cast the deciding vote to permit mobile sports betting in New York, over a dissent from the court’s three more liberal judges. 
And at least seven cases that LaSalle ruled on in his court reached the Court of Appeals in its most recent term. In six of them, he, DiFiore, and the conservative judges voted the same way. 
In <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2022/50-ssm-35.html">three</a> of <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2022/67-ssm-10.html">those</a> <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/appellate-division-second-department/2021/2018-10126.html">cases</a>, they voted against criminal defendants challenging aspects of their sentences and convictions. In <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2022/91.html">two</a> <a href="https://www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decisions/2021/Oct21/54opn21-Decision.pdf">others</a>, they voted to limit the ability of New Yorkers to sue police departments for failing to enforce orders of protection and out-of-state companies for selling faulty products. Judges Jenny Rivera and Rowan Wilson, the two most liberal voices on the court, dissented in all five of those cases. 
DiFiore did vote to overturn a decision that LaSalle voted for <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2021/62.html">once</a> in the most recent term, in a case concerning sex offender registries. And in one <a href="https://nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2021/2021_06939.htm">other decision</a> in that term, the Court of Appeals unanimously upheld LaSalle’s ruling. 
Jonathan Lippman, who preceded DiFiore as chief judge of the Court of Appeals and wrote an <a href="https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Commentary-Hochul-s-pick-for-chief-judge-merits-17683675.php">op-ed</a> in support of LaSalle, said these cases don’t amount to evidence that LaSalle would continue DiFiore’s legacy. 
“I’m not going to predict how the judge will vote once they get on a particular bench,” he told New York Focus. “He is by any standard in the mainstream of legal thinking.” 
Carol Robles-Román, a lawyer who served in the Bloomberg and Pataki administrations and member of Latinos for LaSalle, a group formed to support his confirmation as chief judge, agreed. “You can’t make an assumption because he sat twice on a panel,” she told New York Focus. “You’re not gonna find him in one camp or the other.” 
Peter Martin, who has spearheaded the campaign against LaSalle as an organizer with the nonprofit Center for Community Alternatives, took a different view. “The fact that Justice LaSalle and the entire conservative bloc on the Court of Appeals voted in unison in almost every case they all heard recently tells us everything we need to know,” he said. 
Last month, Hochul herself addressed the two cases that have attracted the most criticism. <a href="https://casetext.com/case/business-v-schneiderman-in-re-evergreen-assn-inc">One</a> restricted the state attorney general’s investigation into an anti-abortion counseling clinic for potentially practicing medicine without a license. The <a href="https://casetext.com/case/cablevision-sys-corp-v-commcns-workers-of-am-dist-5">other</a> allowed a large corporation to sue union leaders for defamation, despite New York law barring most lawsuits against union leaders. 
“If you actually read those cases that are in question, they have nothing to do with a woman’s right to choose,” Hochul argued. She called the decision to allow corporations to sue union leaders “a procedural decision to send it down to the trial courts.” 
In recent days, additional rulings have come under scrutiny. In one case from 2014, LaSalle <a href="https://casetext.com/case/people-v-bridgeforth-8">voted</a> to affirm a conviction despite the defendant, a Black man, arguing that the prosecutor had committed unconstitutional discrimination by rejecting all the potential jurors who were dark-skinned women. 
The Court of Appeals unanimously overturned LaSalle’s decision, in an <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2016/207.html#:~:text=People%20v.%20Bridgeforth%20Defendant%2C%20a%20dark-complexioned%20African-American%20male%2C,peremptory%20strike%20to%20exclude%20a%20dark-complexioned%20Indian-American%20woman">opinion</a> by Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the first Black woman to sit on the Court of Appeals, who ordered a new trial. 
If LaSalle fails to win confirmation, he would become the first nominee to the Court of Appeals ever to be rejected by the state Senate. 
Some Republicans have <a href="https://twitter.com/SamMellins/status/1610354154999775232?s=20&t=nsVilUWjrrrQphnF0fzYvw">indicated</a> they may be willing to vote for him, but even that may not be enough to save Hochul’s pick. Senate Democratic leadership usually doesn’t allow votes on bills or nominations that require Republican support to pass, preferring not to take steps that are opposed by significant portions of the Democratic supermajority in the 63-seat body. 
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat, said that LaSalle would go through the confirmation process, but also noted that “we’re looking for the court to go in a very different direction, and this candidate is difficult as it relates to that.” 
Last month, Hochul suggested that some senators will switch to supporting LaSalle as they become more familiar with his record. Signs so far point to the opposite. On December 31, Senator Shelley Mayer, a moderate Democrat, <a href="https://twitter.com/ShelleyBMayer/status/1609217759501553664?s=20&t=nsVilUWjrrrQphnF0fzYvw">announced</a> that after meeting with LaSalle the day before, she had decided to oppose his confirmation. 
And on Wednesday, Senate Democrats announced that they plan to expand the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, which will vote on whether to recommend LaSalle to the full Senate, by four seats. One of the new additions is Democrat Jessica Ramos, who opposes LaSalle’s confirmation. The other three are not yet public.</div>	 
<script src="https://nysfocus.com/pixel.js" id="republish" data-origin-url="https://nysfocus.com/2023/01/05/hector-lasalle-janet-difiore-appeals-court"></script>