{"id":360726,"date":"2026-09-30T12:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360726\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T12:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:25:10","slug":"brooklyn-democratic-party-leadership-vote-delayed-after-appellate-court-tosses-amended-bylaws-brooklyn-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360726\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Democratic Party leadership vote delayed after appellate court tosses amended bylaws \u2022 Brooklyn Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brooklyn Democratic Party\u2019s new rules \u2014 introduced by outgoing party leader Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn \u2014 must be tossed out, an appellate court ruled Tuesday, upholding lower court decision and delivering a victory to party reformers aligned with New Kings Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The party had been slated to vote to elect new leadership, including a new chair, on Tuesday night. That vote has been delayed by court order after reformers filed a new lawsuit, citing concerns over exactly which rules are truly in effect. On Monday, Bichotte Hermelyn abruptly announced she will not seek re-election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bichotte Hermelyn proposed the rule changes in August, after reformers won enough district leader seats to vote her out as chair and announced they would support longtime district leader Julio Pe\u00f1a III instead. Facing near certain defeat, she moved to add dozens of members to the executive committee, nullifying the new majority and likely ensuring her victory. The amendments were passed by the outgoing executive committee, which included several lame-duck members who had not been re-elected in the June primary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Reformers are expected to support longtime district leader Julio Pe\u00f1a III as the next party chair. File photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n

A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge last week blocked amendments, declaring the vote where they were approved was \u201cimproper\u201d and that the outgoing executive committee members \u201chad no authority to vote \u2026 with respect to the rule amendments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party appealed. But, on Tuesday, the appellate court ruled against Bichotte Hermelyn again, upholding most of the Supreme Court decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Party bylaws in place at the time of the vote say that only elected state committee members (a.k.a. district leaders) are authorized to vote, the ruling reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe operative question, therefore, is whether the outgoing members \u2018were elected as State Committee members\u2019 as of August 25, 2026,\u201d the ruling says. \u201cWe agree with the petitioners that they were not.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As such, it said, the Supreme Court was correct in preventing the party from certifying the rules and declaring that the amendments adopted at the meeting should be \u201cnull and void.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ruling appeared to have cut the executive committee down to its old size, restoring the reformers\u2019 majority. Bichotte Hermelyn is likely to endorse endorse<\/a> Assembly Member Nikki Lucas to replace her, while reformers are backing Pe\u00f1a. If the vote proceeds under the old rules, Pe\u00f1a would likely secure an easy win.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the New Kings Democrats and their lawyers worry Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies will attempt to run the vote using the amended rules. Those rules seemed to have been approved by the full county committee at its organizational meeting<\/a> last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the committee actually voted to ratify the existing rules, said Tony Melone, president of New Kings Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe county committee members voted to ratify the current rules at that meeting. They did not vote to amend the rules,\u201d Melone said. \u201cThat\u2019s important because according to what the court just decided, the valid rules of the party are the ones that were in effect at the time of the June primary, where the district leaders get to elect the party chair.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party did not properly notify county committee members about the amendments, he said \u2014 which several attendees noted at the time \u2014 and did not show the amendments on the screen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"peopleThe Brooklyn Democratic Party\u2019s organizational meeting descended into chaos as members battled over rule changes and party leadership. File photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re afraid that the current party establishment may say, \u2018Oh, well we passed those amendments again at the county committee meeting,\u2019 and that\u2019s not true,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the court has also been very clear that you can\u2019t change the results of an election after you lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Hanna, a district leader and lawyer who has been representing the reformers, filed suit in Brooklyn Supreme Court, requesting a Temporary Restraining Order to delay Tuesday\u2019s executive committee meeting and vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gross irregularities of the County Committee Meeting must be addressed before this meeting is held, as it may cause further, permanent harm, or potential new harms, depending on the outcome of the instant petition,\u201d the petition reads.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Supreme Court judge Lisa Lewis granted the TRO, delaying the meeting until after a hearing next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bichotte Hermelyn and the Brooklyn Democratic Party did not return request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Last updated 9\/29\/26, 5:26 p.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brooklyn Democratic Party\u2019s new rules \u2014 introduced by outgoing party leader Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn \u2014 must be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[134061,22343,98,18390,100,99,10916,25138,43480,124481,54530,3100,5854,126360,10597,130034,9,24,12,370,63,87,130094,17961,123648,2973,130036,134062,2220],"class_list":["post-360726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-amended-rules","tag-appellate-court","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-democratic-party","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-brooklyn-supreme-court","tag-decision","tag-delay","tag-executive-committee","tag-julio-peu00f1a-iii","tag-lawsuit","tag-leadership","tag-mark-hanna","tag-meeting","tag-new-kings-democrats","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-newsletter","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-restraining-order","tag-rodneyse-bichotte-hermelyn","tag-rule-changes","tag-supreme-court","tag-tony-melone","tag-tro","tag-vote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360726","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=360726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}