New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Wednesday that he was unaware that the 18-member Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary did not include any Jewish attorneys, rejecting suggestions that the omission reflected intentional exclusion.
“I did not ask the religion of each person who was put forward,” Mamdani told reporters during a press conference on worker protections. “As you know, the mayor and our administration nominated about half of the members, while the other half were put forward by other entities.”
Mamdani was asked whether the “appearance” that his administration had excluded qualified Jewish lawyers from the committee concerned him.
“The suggestion that any decision-making would be motivated by religion does bother me,” he said. “This is a city that is beautiful because of the breadth of diversity among those who call it home, and that includes the Jewish community across the five boroughs.”
Mamdani announced the committee’s full slate on July 22, saying its members brought a “diverse range of legal expertise.” The mayor’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, described the members as a “truly representative cross-section” of the city’s legal profession.
The advisory committee appoints judges to the city’s criminal courts, where hate crimes, among other offenses, go to trial. It also appoints judges to family courts, and interim judges to civil court benches when there is a temporary vacancy.
A coalition of Jewish bar associations wrote to Mamdani on Monday expressing “deep disappointment” that the committee did not appear to include a single Jewish member. The groups urged Mamdani to “correct this exclusion” and affirm that Jewish New Yorkers deserve the same representation and respect as other communities.
Mamdani also defended his administration’s decision not to reappoint retired New York State appellate judge John Leventhal, a Jewish attorney who had served on the committee and was nominated for another term by New York Chief Judge Rowan Wilson.
The mayor said Leventhal was rejected because of his prior representation of Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, during her federal appeal.
“As much as possible, we thought it best to avoid any association between the committee responsible for recommending judges and the Epstein world, especially given how much the case has contributed to a loss of faith among many New Yorkers and Americans in our legal and political systems,” Mamdani said.
