At press time, Jack Lester, a New York City attorney who runs an eponymous firm, planned to sue Zohran Mamdani, the city mayor, on Thursday, Feb. 19, he told JNS.

Lester, who has also sued the city over congestion pricing, told JNS that the suit is an effort to compel City Hall to release emails and other documents about Mamdani’s executive orders in the early hours of his mayorship that revoked his predecessor’s policies protecting Jews and barring boycotts of Israel.

On Jan. 12, Lester filed a Freedom of Information Law request—New York’s version of the Freedom of Information Act—to obtain the records. By state law, the city must acknowledge receipt of such a request within five days and provide the information, with certain exceptions, within 20 work days.

Mandani’s office denied the request and said that it needed to be directed to the city’s law department. Lester filed an appeal, which was quickly denied. (JNS sought comment from Mandani’s office.)

Five members of the New York City Council, all Republicans, and 28 private citizens holding a range of political views and affiliations have signed onto the suit that he intends to file in New York State Supreme Court.

Mamdani’s first executive order, which revoked all of his predecessor’s orders in the prior 15 months, axed the city’s recognition of the widely used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of Jew-hatred and its ban on boycotting Israel.

Lester told JNS that the mayor did so “in a vacuum without any rationale, studies or impact statements.

“We’d like to know what public policies will result, what impacts on the purchase of Israeli bonds there will be, educational policies, and public safety policies,” he said. “There is a broad area of impacts that have been left without any sort of comment.”

Retired wealth manager Jeffrey Weisenfeld previously worked in city government under Democratic mayor Ed Koch, in state government under Republican governor George Pataki and with Republican senator Al D’Amato. He feels clear about what the mayor’s objectives were in immediately reversing the city policies relating to Jews.

“He sent a signal” to anti-Zionists and antisemites, Weisenfeld told JNS.

Mamdani’s “bifurcation of Jews from Israel is a very dangerous thing. For most of us Judaism is both the covenant and the land” of Israel, he said. “It’s not for him to define Judaism, just as we don’t define Islam.” (The Uganda-born mayor is Muslim.)

The lack of substantive response to the FOIL request shows that “there must be something there,” Weisenfeld told JNS. “I’m pleased it’s getting to a formalized lawsuit that highlights protections that he’s not providing for Jews.”

Lester told JNS that he is working on the case pro bono, because he felt angered by Mamdani’s first action as mayor.

“The fact that he did it as his first act as mayor was a slap in the face to the entire Jewish community,” Lester told JNS.