The Transport Workers Union plans to file federal suit if a bill banning carriage horses citywide passes the City Council on Thursday, October 22, as expected.

Last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced that the legislation—known as Romanch’s Law, in tribute to a teenage tourist who died during a Central Park carriage accident in June—had garnered enough votes to pass with a super majority in the City Council. Mamdani said he will sign the bill into law.

There will be dueling press conferences from both sides before the vote on Oct. 22.

The TWU represents the few hundred remaining licensed carriage workers operating in New York City, largely in Central Park; the trade has taken place there for the last 150 years or so. The bill, whose prime sponsor is downtown City Council member Chris Marte, says it will set up training programs to transition the carriage horse drivers to new jobs.

But the union is blasting the vague promise of new jobs, insisting that the union members love the jobs they have now in the carriage trade.

“This bill is a train wreck of constitutional and due process violations,” TWU International President John Samuelsen said in a statement provided to Straus News.

“It offers nothing concrete for blue-collar drivers and carriage owners who will be financially crushed, stripped of their jobs, their licenses, expensive city-issued medallions, small businesses, and way of life,” Samuelson added. “It is not progressive. It is anti-worker. It’s theft.”

Romanch’s Law represents the culmination of a decades-long push to ban the trade, largely spearheaded by animal rights activists and community groups such as NYCLASS (New Yorkers for Safe, Clean, Livable Streets), the latter of which the TWU separately sued last year.

Two lawyers representing the TWU penned a fierce letter to City Corporation Counsel Steven Banks on October 21—the day before the vote. In it, they essentially asked Banks to advise Mayor Mamdani against signing the bill.

Citing their personal relationship with the city’s lawyer, who they described as “a champion for Constitutional rights over the years,” attorneys Arthur J. Schwartz and Ben Kallos described Romanch’s Law as “a mess of serious Federal and State Constitutional violations.”

Kallos was Menin’s predecessor in the Upper East Side City Council seat that she was elected to in 2021, after he faced term limits and made an unsuccessful bid for NYS Assembly. While on the City Council, Kallos headed the Progressive Caucus.

Schwartz, meanwhile, is known for his dogged representation of a community group that sought to halt the shutdown of Mt. Sinai Beth Israel hospital in the East Village—which eventually closed its doors last April after a long and bruising legal fight.

“The pending bill just basically says: ‘Poof, your medallion is now worthless. Your horse needs to be put to pasture, and we get to dictate where that pasture is. Your carriage is now worthless. Your stable is now worthless. And your profession, the one you have a license for, is now banned,” Kallos and Schwartz wrote.

“You know that the Fifth Amendment bars a ‘taking’ without ‘just compensation.’ So does the New York State Constitution,” they argued.

Carriage workers, union leaders and supporters will gather for a 9 a.m. press conference and rally at the Broadway entrance to City Hall, across the street from 250 Broadway, Manhattan. Horses and carriages will be present, the union said.

Marte, Menin, and other city council members are expected to be joined by members of Romanch Mahajan’s family, animal welfare advocates, and other supporters of Romanch’s Law for a rally at noon on Thursday before the bill’s expected passage at 1 p.m.