Four Appellate judges redesignated by Hochul

Appellate Division, Second Department Judges Sheri Roman and Joseph J. Maltese and First Department Judges Ellen Gesmer and David Friedman were designated back to the bench last week.  Eagle file photo by Rob Abruzzese

By Jacob Kaye

Four Appellate Division judges cut from the bench last year in a controversial austerity measure have been brought back to the courts, according to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office.

Hochul designated Judges Sheri Roman, Ellen Gesmer, David Friedman and Joseph J. Maltese back to their respective Appellate Division Departments last week, the Eagle has learned.

Roman, a Queens judge, will head back to the Appellate Division, Second Department, where she’s served since 2009.

Gesmer and Friedman, who was originally designated to the Second Department in 1999, are both headed back to the Appellate Division, First Department, where they have both served since 2016.

Maltese was designated to the Second Department. He was first designated to the court by former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2014.

A spokesperson for the governor said the redesignation of Roman, Gesmer, Friedman and Maltese was about bringing their expertise back to the bench.

“Governor Hochul is committed to ensuring highly qualified, independent, and diverse courts, and the Governor redesignated these four judges to the Appellate Divisions of the First and Second departments to continue to serve New Yorkers with their skills and experience," said Hazel Crampton-Hays, Hochul’s press secretary.

The four judges were cut by the Office of Court Administration last fall, when the agency announced it was facing a budget shortfall stemming from the pandemic. In an effort to save money, OCA declined to recertify 46 judges over the age 70 and their judicial staff.

Though OCA recertified a handful of those judges in April, less than half returned. Roman, Gesmer, Friedman and Maltese were all recertified but, in a move that broke from tradition, went without designation from the governor’s office for nearly half a year.

Queens Supreme Court Justice Carmen Velasquez, who also serves as the president of the Association of Supreme Court Justices of the State of New York, celebrated the news of the judges’ return to the bench.

“We are very, very happy – it was the right thing to do,” Velasquez said.

The judges’ designations were a main topic at the Association of Supreme Court Justices of the State of New York’s convention earlier in the month. The group agreed to push Hochul, who became the governor in August, to designate the judges, just as they did to Cuomo.

The association was in contact with the governor’s office and had a scheduled meeting to discuss the designations and other topics for Monday. The meeting was cancelled last week for good reason, Velasquez said.

“Fifty percent of what we were going to talk about, it became a reality,” she said.

Velasquez said that the Association had been collecting testimony from all sorts of legal professionals, from bar associations to retired judges, who were in support of the judges’ redesignations.

“We had a lot of support for the four the judges,” she said. “These are stellar professionals who have worked all their lives in the trial level, and the Appellate Division level, so these are not rookie judges...I'm just glad that the governor had the vision and courage to make the right call.”

With Roman’s designation, Queens will now have three judges in the Appellate Division, Second Department, which represents Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley.

Velasquez noted that the Queens judges represent the borough’s famed diversity – Roman is of Jewish descent, Judge Joseph Zayas is of Hispanic descent and Valerie Brathwaite Nelson is of African American descent.

Hon. Jeremy Weinstein, the former Administrative judge of the Supreme Court, Queens County, Civil Term and current director with the Jewish Bar Alliance of New York, said that the Bar Alliance welcomed the news of the judges’ designations.

“JBANY felt very strongly about the reappointment of judges, Roman, Kazmir and Friedman,” Weinstein said. “We made our issues known to the governor and we are thrilled that she listened and acted.”

Weinstein added that Roman “has been an outstanding jurist and the Second Department is fortunate to have her back.”

The fact that the designation of the judges was held up was unusual, election attorney Jerry Goldfeder, of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, told the Eagle in August.

“Normally, you have a position, you're recertified, you're immediately redesignated – period,” Goldfeder said.

Roman, Gesmer and Friedman sued the OCA in November of last year after it was announced they’d be given the pink slip.

The lawsuit, which names the OCA, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks as defendants, alleges the OCA “violated their statutory and constitutional duties, committed acts of blatant age discrimination in violation of the New York State and New York City Human Rights Law, and violated state constitutional provisions thereby creating direct conflict with the prerogatives of the other branches of our state government.”

The lawsuit, filed in Suffolk County Supreme Court, Civil Term, is active.