NYCLU and Environmental Groups File Amicus Briefs Defending Full Enforceability of NY Green Amendment

NEW YORK – Today, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Green Amendments For The Generations and Delaware Riverkeeper Network filed amicus briefs with the Appellate division, challenging a lower court decision finding that the New York Green Amendment is not self-executing in a case related to lead exposure in Buffalo homes. The Green Amendment guarantees every New Yorker the constitutional right to clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment. 

Last year, four Buffalo residents and community organizations — including Partnership for the Public Good, PUSH Buffalo, HOME, and the Center for Elder Law and Justice — filed a lawsuit to compel the City of Buffalo to enforce a rental inspection law to reduce lead paint in its housing stock. The lawsuit invoked the New York Green Amendment, arguing that the city’s failure to enforce lead inspection laws contributed to lead poisoning in the community. In January 2025, a state supreme court dismissed the case on several counts, including that the Green Amendment has no legal effect unless and until the state legislature passed laws describing this effect. On October 7, the groups appealed the dismissal.   

“Passed by an overwhelming majority of New Yorkers, the Green Amendment is a critical tool to fight environmental racism by empowering disadvantaged communities,” said Ify Chikezie, staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It is well-established that fundamental constitutional rights are self-executing and take legal effect such that New Yorkers whose constitutional rights are violated can seek redress. We urge the appellate court to reverse the lower court’s ruling, so that the Green Amendment, which guarantees fundamental protections for all New Yorkers, can fulfil its purpose to ensure environmental justice for all.”  

“New Yorkers added the right to clean water and air, and a healthful environment to the state constitution because too often the laws as written were failing to provide essential protections and gave impacted communities no pathway to secure a remedy. The NY Green Amendment was written to be self-executing to ensure impacted communities always had meaningful power to challenge government action, or inaction, that infringed on their environmental rights. The lower court ruling strips this fundamental legal underpinning and intent of the amendment,” said Maya van Rossum, Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations and leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, two organizations that led the effort to secure New York’s Green Amendment. 

New York courts have long treated fundamental rights as self-executing, including the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to organize and collectively bargain, and the right to due process. The amicus briefs filed today support this appeal by arguing that, consistent with the other fundamental guarantees protected under the state constitution, the Green Amendment must be interpreted as self-executing. Failing to interpret the amendment as self-executing also undermines its fundamental purpose—to guarantee every New Yorker a safe and healthful environment as a basic civil right, particularly for those living in marginalized communities.  

A copy of the NYCLU’s brief can be found here: https://www.nyclu.org/court-cases/nyclu-amicus-curiae-brief-green-amendment

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