Transport Workers Union Local 100 filed suit against the MTA Friday, accusing transit executives of illegally reducing staffing at subway station booths without holding the public hearings required under state law.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, was joined by Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and the head of the Center for the Independence of the Disabled New York. It charges MTA leadership with violating state public authorities law by making what amount to booth closures without the required public process. The complaint also accuses the agency of violating the city’s Human Rights Law by cutting off subway access for riders with disabilities at stations where agents operate service gates.
TWU Local 100 president John Chiarello spelled out the stakes at a news conference Monday outside the Jay Street-MetroTech station in Downtown Brooklyn. “The MTA, in their not-so-infinite wisdom, once again is taking away people who are the eyes and ears of everyone inside the transit system,” he said. “I know that if you don’t have this in the system, there’s going to be issues.”
The core complaint is that the MTA has been leaving booths unstaffed whenever a worker calls out sick or an emergency pulls them away, rather than sending a replacement. Reynoso framed it plainly: “There’s always a booth operator present to help make that happen. And what the MTA decided to do is, unilaterally not replace a worker if they go out of work, if an emergency happens. They want to keep the booths empty.”
The MTA declined to comment on the lawsuit’s specifics. New York City Transit president Demetrius Crichlow instead pointed to a 2023 agreement that moved more than 2,500 station agents out of booths to provide customer service on platforms and elsewhere inside stations. “At the time of that signed agreement, public notice was provided, hearings were held and station agents were provided additional pay,” Crichlow said in a statement.
The union, for its part, acknowledges signing that deal. But TWU argues the current pattern of leaving booths empty without notice or process goes well beyond what was agreed to, and crosses the legal line into closures that trigger the public hearing requirement.
The legal history here runs deep. The union and allied groups have been fighting versions of this battle for nearly 25 years. Back in August 2001, when the subway system had more than 900 staffed booths, they won temporary court orders blocking the MTA from closing 53 of them without public hearings. That was a different era. Attorney Arthur Schwartz, who represents TWU Local 100, says the number of booths has since fallen to roughly 400.
The timing of this latest lawsuit is not incidental. The union and the MTA are heading into contract negotiations later this year, and staffing levels at station booths have long been a pressure point between the two sides. For the union, keeping humans in those booths is both a matter of member employment and public safety. For the MTA, thinning out booth staffing is one lever in an endless effort to manage costs in a system that perpetually runs short of money.
What the MTA cannot do, the union argues, is use operational flexibility as cover to dodge statutory obligations. State public authorities law exists precisely to force these decisions into the open, where riders, disability advocates, and elected officials can weigh in before stations lose the people who help navigate a system that remains genuinely difficult to use without assistance.
For riders with disabilities, the stakes are not abstract. Service gates at many stations are the only accessible entry and exit points, and they require a station agent to operate them. When a booth goes unstaffed and no replacement arrives, those gates effectively close to anyone who cannot use a standard turnstile. That, the lawsuit argues, is a civil rights violation hiding behind a staffing policy.
The case will now move through Manhattan Supreme Court. Whether a judge agrees that the MTA’s current practices constitute the kind of “complete or partial closing” the law was written to regulate could reshape how the agency manages its booth workforce for years to come.
