The Legal Aid Society intervened on behalf of Make the Road New York, New York State Tenants & Neighbors, and the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, in a constitutional pre-emption challenge of new NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) regulations that made incremental changes and that codified prior court decisions. The regulations provided additional protection to tenants around lease riders, rent registrations, major capital improvements and overcharges. While the regulatory changes were incremental, they were the first regulatory changes in decades not to favor landlords.

In May 2017, a state trial court judge granted motions by LAS and DHCR to dismiss the landlords’ case. The trial court’s decision was affirmed by the Appellate Division in April 2021.