{"id":360062,"date":"2026-09-29T20:18:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T20:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360062\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T20:18:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T20:18:49","slug":"appellate-court-rejects-new-rules-sought-by-brooklyn-dems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360062\/","title":{"rendered":"Appellate court rejects new rules sought by Brooklyn Dems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Brooklyn appellate court on Tuesday has once again tossed out much-criticized new rules that would help the leaders of the Brooklyn Democratic Party <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/all-boroughs\/politics\/2026\/08\/24\/progressive-democrats-slam-brooklyn-party-boss--attempted-rule-change\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">stay in power<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The decision could upend a scheduled vote for Tuesday night, where the party&#8217;s leadership was expected to <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/all-boroughs\/politics\/2026\/08\/26\/rodneyse-bichotte-bk-dems-leadershp-changes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">select a new chairperson<\/a>. The outgoing chair, Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/all-boroughs\/politics\/2026\/09\/28\/brooklyn-party-chair-will-not-seek-reelection-\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">unexpectedly bowed out of the race<\/a> on Monday night in an interview on NY1&#8217;s &#8220;Inside City Hall.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But prior to that, she orchestrated <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/all-boroughs\/politics\/2026\/08\/26\/brooklyn-party-boss-wins-enough-votes-to-clinch-controversial-rule-changes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a rule change<\/a> to expand the party&#8217;s leadership in a move widely interpreted as giving her re-election bid a boost.<\/p>\n<p>A panel of five appellate judges in Brooklyn, in part, <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/all-boroughs\/news\/2026\/09\/15\/judge-strikes-down-rule-changes-favored-by-brooklyn-democratic-party-chair\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">affirmed a lower court ruling<\/a> that found the rule changes to expand the party&#8217;s leadership from 42 to around 100 people were invalid. In the opinion, the appellate justices found: &#8220;Viewed in that holistic manner, the Party Rules plainly tie the status of those who &#8216;were elected as State Committee members&#8217; to the most recent primary election. Here, that primary election occurred in June 2026. Consequently, by August 25, 2026, the outgoing members no longer held the status of individuals who &#8216;were elected as State Committee members.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The rule changes were first proposed after a group of so-called reformers won a majority of district leader seats in Brooklyn during the June primary. The reformers put forward their own candidate for the chair of the party, <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/brooklyn\/news\/2026\/07\/17\/reform-democrats-pick-candidate-for-new-brooklyn-democratic-chair\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Julio Pena<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It was then that <a href=\"https:\/\/ny1.com\/nyc\/all-boroughs\/inside-city-hall\/2026\/09\/28\/rodneyse-bichotte-hermelyn-will-not-seek-reelection-as-brooklyn-democratic-party-chair\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bichotte Hermelyn<\/a> and others acted to change who could vote for that position.<\/p>\n<p>An attorney for the reformers was back in the lower court on Tuesday afternoon, hoping to prevent the vote on the county&#8217;s new chair from taking place Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brooklyn appellate court on Tuesday has once again tossed out much-criticized new rules that would help the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[109,25,98,100,99,14647,9,24,12,63,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-360062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-courtney-gross","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}