An MTA policy allowing subway station booths to go unstaffed violates the state’s Human Rights Law due to its "unlawful disparate impact" on disabled and impaired riders, a judge ruled on Friday. The ruling blocking future efforts to slow the backfill of staff in booths in the event of an unplanned absence came as the result of a class-action lawsuit filed by Transport Workers Union Local 100, the Center for the Independence of the Disabled and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso earlier this year.
The groups sued the MTA in response to a Jan. 2 bulletin that MTA leadership sent to station agents informing them of the process for properly locking and preparing station booths to be unstaffed for entire eight-hour shifts whenever a station agent is out sick. In the weeks after the bulletin was sent out, the MTA began leaving more station booths unstaffed, union officials say.
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