A judge has tossed out the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s purported leader and its most recent set of rules, setting the stage for what may be a final showdown between the old guard and reformers.
Brooklyn Supreme Court justice Peter Sweeney on Tuesday nullified a set of party bylaws proposed by former party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies and voided the questionably-legal election of Assembly Member Nikki Lucas as party chair. The party must reconvene its September organizational meeting to vote on Bichotte Hermelyn’s proposed bylaws, Sweeney ordered, before it can move to properly elect a new chair.
For now, the party is operating under its 2024 bylaws and is temporarily headed by county committee chair Nydia Velázquez.
The decisions arrived after months of infighting and court battles that have split the party in two.
In the June primary election, party reformers aligned with New Kings Democrats won enough district leader seats to elect a new chair: longtime district leader Julio Peña III. At a late-night meeting in August, Bichotte Hermelyn and her allies passed a series of bylaw amendments that added dozens of people to the party’s Executive Committee, nullifying reformers’ majority and likely securing her position for another term.
A judge later tossed those rules, but a temporary stay issued by an appellate court left them in place for the party’s chaotic organizational meeting on Sept. 23. Under the new rules, the party voted to elect a host of new executive committee members and to reaffirm support for the amendments.
Days later, the appellate court upheld the lower court’s decision, meaning the Sept. 23 meeting had been carried out under defunct rules.
On Oct. 4, in violation of a temporary restraining order, Bichotte Hermelyn — who announced that she would not seek re-election as chair on Sept. 28 — and her allies elected Lucas as party chair, a move reformers said was illegitimate and illegal.
In court, reformers have argued that Bichotte Hermelyn’s amended bylaws were not properly adopted. Sweeney, in his ruling, agreed, noting that the vote had not followed election law or the party’s own bylaws.
“It is undisputed these procedures were not followed, and the purported rules amendments are thus rendered invalid,” he wrote.
While the amended rules were not correctly approved at the meeting, he wrote, the county committee did validly elect a host of new executive committee members whose roles are “in limbo,” as they don’t exist under the now-reimplemented 2024 rules.
“Accordingly, the court finds … that the September 23rd meeting was conducted in a manner so irregular as to render it impossible to determine the propriety of the election of the persons to those newly created positions. The court thus determines that reassembling the organizational meeting under the 2024 Party Rules and allowing consideration of any permissible rule changes, and any election with respect to new officer positions if such rule changes are enacted is warranted under the circumstances,” Sweeney wrote.
He ordered everyone involved in the lawsuit — the party and reformers — to return to court on Nov. 17 to hash out the details.
In a separate ruling, Sweeney said the Oct. 4 meeting where Lucas was elected chair is “a nullity,” as it lacked a quorum of executive committee members as defined by the 2024 bylaws.
As a result, he said, no chair or any other members were elected at that meeting, and “any other action taken at such meeting or by the so organized Executive Committee thereafter are null, void and of no force or effect.” He also ordered that the executive committee cannot meet to elect a chair until after the new organizational meeting.
Lucas did not return request for comment.
Peña said the decision was “a victory for Brooklyn Democrats and for everyone who voted for change this past June.”
“The courts have repeatedly rejected efforts to rewrite our party’s rules, and yesterday’s decision voided the purported election of a successor chosen through that invalid process. This power grab cannot be the way our party does business,” he added.
A date for the new organizational meeting has not yet been chosen, but it will likely be overseen by county committee chair Velázquez, who is serving as de-facto party leader until a new chair is elected and is aligned with reformers.
Bichotte Hermelyn and Lucas still hold a majority of county committee proxy votes, which delivered them to victory at the Sept. 23 meeting. If they propose the amended bylaws again, they may secure another win.
The Brooklyn Democratic Party did not immediately return a request for comment. In a since-deleted Instagram post on Tuesday night, the party said the court’s decision was “neutral.”
“We look forward to bringing together County Committee members from every corner of Brooklyn and conducting and even more inclusive process that reflects the diversity and strength of our borough,” the post read.
