But the law is now on hold \u2014 with the state\u2019s signoff. After Governor Kathy Hochul\u2019s administration agreed, a federal judge finalized a deal last week that will likely\u00a0suspend New York\u2019s gas ban<\/a>\u00a0for at least a year and potentially two or more.<\/p>\n The state\u2019s sudden retreat came after a series of actions from Hochul this year walking back the state\u2019s climate commitments:\u00a0shelving<\/a>\u00a0a promised carbon pricing program and\u00a0vowing to fight<\/a>\u00a0a court ruling to revive it;\u00a0signing off<\/a>\u00a0on a thrice-rejected underwater gas pipeline after\u00a0talks with President Donald Trump<\/a>; and\u00a0granting permits<\/a>\u00a0to a gas-powered cryptocurrency mining facility that regulators had long said violated the state\u2019s climate law.<\/p>\n In late October, Hochul made it clear that she was having second thoughts about the building mandate, too.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the electric building issue, I\u2019m looking for an all of the above approach,\u201d she told reporters in Rochester at the time. \u201cI\u2019m going to look at this with a very realistic approach and do what I can, because my number one focus is affordability right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Republicans<\/a>\u00a0and upstate Democrats had been pressuring Hochul to\u00a0press pause<\/a>\u00a0on the electric buildings law, and industry opponents of the law were still trying to persuade a judge to block it, but the state was holding its ground in court. Then, on November 12, New York\u2019s lawyers filed an\u00a0agreement<\/a>\u00a0with the law\u2019s opponents to delay implementation until four months after a federal appeals court and even the\u00a0US\u00a0Supreme Court weigh in. The judge\u2019s signoff made it legally binding \u2014 notably, delaying enforcement until after next year\u2019s gubernatorial election.<\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s office is now framing the court deal as a pragmatic step that will help uphold the law in the long term.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Governor remains committed to the all-electric-buildings law and believes this action will help the State defend it, as well as reduce regulatory uncertainty for developers during this period of litigation,\u201d said spokesperson Ken Lovett in a statement.<\/p>\n Some legal experts are skeptical.<\/p>\n \u201cThe state\u2019s move, while it was done under the cover of litigation, was 100 percent a political move,\u201d said Amy Turner, director of the Cities Climate Law Initiative at Columbia University\u2019s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.<\/p>\n If the governor had sought to put the electric buildings mandate on hold through executive action, climate groups almost certainly would have sued. With the court agreement, Turner said, \u201cthey found a way to do it that makes it seem like their hands were tied.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a closer look at what New York argued in court in early October \u2014 and why its recent backtracking is raising eyebrows among some legal observers.<\/p>\n 1. Plaintiffs would need to meet a really\u00a0high legal bar to put the law on hold.<\/p>\n The saga started when a coalition of gas and construction industry interests, including building trades unions, sued New York state in the federal Northern District over the\u00a0freshly passed<\/a>\u00a0electric buildings law in 2023. They argued that under federal law, the state does not have the power to ban fossil fuel appliances.<\/p>\n Judge Glenn Suddaby ruled in favor of the state this July and dismissed the case, but the plaintiffs went back to him in September, pleading for him to suspend the law anyway while they appealed the ruling. They argued that they had a strong case, citing a federal appeals court in California that had\u00a0overturned<\/a>\u00a0Berkeley\u2019s first-in-the-nation gas ban on the basis of the same federal law.<\/p>\n It was not unusual for the New York plaintiffs to seek such an injunction, said Daniel Carpenter-Gold, an attorney at the Public Health Law Center who has been\u00a0tracking the case<\/a>. \u201cBut it\u2019s also very difficult to win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In their October 1\u00a0brief<\/a>, New York\u2019s lawyers stressed just how high of a bar the plaintiffs would have to meet to secure an injunction at this stage \u2014 particularly since it was the first time in the two-year case that they\u2019d asked the judge to take such a step.<\/p>\n They would need to convince the district court judge to block a law that was passed through the democratic process and that he himself had just upheld. To do so, they would need to show both that they had a good chance of winning at the appellate level, and that they would face \u201cirreparable harm\u201d if the law were allowed to proceed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPlaintiffs fail to satisfy any of these requirements,\u201d the state\u2019s lawyers argued.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0New York state couldn\u2019t block the law even if it wanted to.<\/p>\n The state went a step further in its October 1 filing, arguing that it couldn\u2019t suspend the law even if it wanted to. The Code Council had already finalized the new building code, the culmination of a lengthy process that takes place every five years and is meant to take into account new laws like the All-Electric Buildings Act that are passed in the interim.<\/p>\n Once the new code is published, it\u2019s up to local code enforcement officials \u2014 not the state \u2014 to enforce it. In other words, New York\u2019s lawyers argued, it was too late for a court to force the state to block it.<\/p>\n 3. Delaying implementation would cause the state \u201cirreparable harm.\u201d<\/p>\n The final issue at stake in the recent court exchange was which side would suffer \u201cirreparable harm\u201d if their opponents prevailed. The plaintiffs argued that they would: Propane gas companies, for example, could lose much of their new business, and union plumbers and pipefitters could lose jobs.<\/p>\n The state countered that it would, because new fossil fuel buildings constructed while the law is on hold would last for decades to come, irreversibly setting back the state\u2019s efforts to meet its legally binding climate targets.<\/p>\n As the political battle\u00a0over building electrification heated up in early November, there was no sign that Judge Suddaby was wavering on his decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n On November 3, the plaintiffs said they would move the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals if he didn\u2019t file an injunction within a week. He didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cThe state has a strong case,\u201d said Carpenter-Gold, of the Public Health Law Center. There was \u201cnothing that I could see that would have indicated that their position had weakened in any way,\u201d he said. So he was surprised when New York\u2019s lawyers suddenly conceded the plaintiffs\u2019 demand.<\/p>\n The deal suspends the law for at least a year: until the appeals court rules on it, which could easily take six months; while the plaintiffs potentially appeal to the\u00a0US\u00a0Supreme Court, which could add several months more, even if the high court declines to take up the case; and for another four months either way.<\/p>\n Climate hawks are\u00a0furious<\/a>\u00a0at the Hochul administration\u2019s decision. After it was first reported, lawmakers and advocates\u00a0lined up to demand<\/a>\u00a0that the governor reverse course. That would be hard for her to do. Now that the judge has signed off on the November 12 deal, the state is under court order to keep the law on ice. The New York\u00a0Department of State issued a\u00a0notice<\/a>\u00a0late last week that the all-electric section of the building code is on pause.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not yet clear whether the notice fully satisfies the court order, or whether the code council will take further action to codify the delay. Climate advocates are planning to rally outside its next meeting, on December 5, either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When New York abruptly backed down this month from its plans to implement a nation-leading ban on gas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3932,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-62649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-gov-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62649","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=62649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AEB-excerpt-1.webp\")
Source: New York State Unified Court System. Image courtesy of NYFocus<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AEB-excerpt-2.webp\")
Source: New York State Unified Court System. Image courtesy of NYFocus<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AEB-excerpt-3.webp\")
Source: New York State Unified Court System. Image courtesy of NYFocus<\/p>\n