The Law Reform Unit builds upon the needs of individual clients to make systemic changes through litigation and advocacy that benefit large numbers of clients with similar legal problems. Through class actions and other affirmative litigation, we seek to enforce the rights of many similarly situated persons or to establish new legal rights. The unit’s active affirmative law reform litigation docket includes cases that benefit virtually the entire population of low-income New Yorkers.

This Unit conducts impact litigation and advocates for legislative and regulatory reform on behalf of New Yorkers in need on a host of civil legal issues, including benefits, immigration, health law, homelessness, and housing.

Our Impact

Expanding Housing Subsidies
In 2024, we sued the Adams Administration for refusing to implement historic new City laws that would provide housing subsidies to thousands of desperate tenants facing eviction from long-term apartments. An appeals court upheld our claims after a wrongful dismissal at the trial level, and in 2026, we reached a settlement that creates a new City housing subsidy program that will save hundreds of families from eviction and allow hundreds of shelter residents to find permanent housing. 

Defending Rights of Supportive Housing Tenants

We recently settled a case against a prominent supportive housing provider that expands tenant protections against needless evictions and mandates assistance for tenants seeking City payment of rent arrears. This case forms part of a broader campaign to stop the commencement eviction proceedings by government-funded programs against vulnerable supportive housing residents.

Fighting Discrimination against Section 8 recipients
We are enforcing the City’s laws against source of income discrimination against dozens of landlords and real estate brokers in both state and federal court. A federal judge recently upheld our right to pursue the claim that the defendants’ conduct also constituted racial discrimination against persons of color with housing subsidies.

Defending Rent Regulation
We represented tenant groups intervening in five different federal cases that challenged the constitutionality of New York’s longstanding rent stabilization system. If successful, these cases would have eliminated affordable housing for over a million families. Thanks to a strong partnership between New York State, New York City, and the tenants, all five cases were dismissed at the trial and appellate court level, and all were rejected by the US Supreme Court. We are now defending the Rent Laws against a sixth challenge recently filed in federal court.

Securing timely benefits for vulnerable families
In 2023, we filed two class action cases to end the City’s outrageous delays in providing cash, food stamps and rental assistance to New York’s most desperate and vulnerable families. As a result of settlements in these case, the City has substantially eliminated the backlog in processing housing subsidy, food stamp, and cash assistance applications and renewals, including emergency applications, and significantly reduced waiting times for clients seeking telephone interviews for City benefits. We continue to seek additional systemic reforms of City procedures.

Defending NYCHA Residents
We are working with NYCHA residents to ensure a smooth transition to a program restructuring that will unlock hundreds of millions of federal dollars for desperately needed renovations in public housing throughout the City. 

Defending the Right to Shelter
The Adams Administration sought to use the recent influx of migrants as an excuse to undermine the right to shelter that has existed since Legal Aid’s landmark 1981 victory in Callahan v. Carey. We reached a settlement with the City that preserves the right to shelter for all New Yorkers, including recent arrivals, and creates procedures for new migrants to seek continuing help while they apply for asylum and seek employment and permanent housing. We filed supporting papers in the case that stopped Mayor Adams from allowing ICE to open an office on Rikers Island.

Learn more about our casework on The Legal Aid Society litigation docket.