In the Matter of Terrell Williams, Respondent,v.City of New York, et al., Appellants.BriefN.Y.January 3, 2018 August 14, 2017 Hon. John P. Asiello Chief Clerk and Legal Counsel to the Court New York State Court of Appeals 20 Eagle Street Albany, New York 12207-1095 Re: Williams v. City of New York, et al., APL-2017-00107 Dear Mr. Asiello: We respectfully submit this letter brief on the same day as our letter brief in Beatty v. City of New York, et al., APL-2017-00123, and two weeks after the close of submissions in Bolt v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., APL-2017-00068. We reiterate our position that all three appeals warrant full briefing and argument, as they address a mistaken trend in decisions of the Appellate Division, First Department, on a recurring legal issue of public importance: the circumstances when an arbitrator’s dismissal of a teacher for misconduct is so “shocking to the conscience” that a court may override it. ZACHARY W. CARTER Corporation Counsel THE CITY OF NEW YORK LAW DEPARTMENT 100 CHURCH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10007 KATHY CHANG PARK Assistant Corporation Counsel Phone: (212) 356-0855 Fax: (212) 356-2509 Email: kpark@law.nyc.gov i'.'a.aMi®§V; wmm 2 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT In this article 75 proceeding, the Appellate Division, First Department, over a dissent, vacated an independent arbitrator’s determination that petitioner Terrell Williams should be dismissed from employment as a public schoolteacher upon findings that he repeatedly crossed appropriate boundaries with his adolescent female students. Williams had a pattern of asking eighth-grade girls whether they had any cute older sisters or other relatives, what they looked like, and if he could have their telephone numbers. The Court should reinstate the penalty of dismissal. The Appellate Division majority, at bottom, opined that Williams might be able to clean up his act. But the arbitrator focused on that very issue, and, after presiding over the entire disciplinary hearing and observing Williams’s testimony, reasonably concluded that Williams had given no reason to think he would change. He showed no recognition of appropriate boundaries; blamed his students for his own conduct; denied seeing himself as a role model; and said all that he would do differently in the future was eliminate “down time” during class and document his interactions with students to protect himself. The arbitrator had ample basis to determine that dismissal was warranted. Under established law, an arbitrator’s determination on penalty may be overridden only when it is “shocking to one’s sense of fairness.” The arbitrator’s decision here is by no means shocking. Public schoolteachers are charged with supervising and educating children during school hours, and parents who send their children away from their oversight rightly expect DOE to employ teachers who will respect appropriate boundaries and refrain from using their position of authority to enlist young students in their personal romantic pursuits. It is also fair to ask teachers who have repeatedly violated these norms to demonstrate that they understand them and will abide by them going forward. The arbitrator found that Williams showed neither. By overriding the arbitrator’s reasonable judgment, the First Department exceeded the proper bounds of judicial review. 3 STATEMENT OF THE CASE A. The New York City public school system The operation of public schools may be government’s most critical function. DOE operates the nation’s largest public school system, serving around 1.1 million students, running over 1,800 schools, and employing about 92,000 teachers.1 The body of students is not only extremely large, but also richly diverse in their backgrounds. More than four-fifths of students are Latino, African-American, or Asian- American;2 more than half are immigrants or the children of immigrants;3 and nearly four-fifths are eligible for federal lunch assistance.4 Many students also have special needs, as more than 100,000 are enrolled in special education programs.5 DOE’s mission is to provide all of its students with a safe and appropriate learning environment that helps them to reach their full potential. Teachers arguably play the most important role in fostering the school’s learning environment: they hold a unique position of trust, care, and authority with their students, and wield great influence in 1 The material in this section is drawn from information available on the DOE website and the State Department of Education’s website. See N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., http://on.nyc.gov/2hRRZQ4 (last accessed Aug. 11, 2017); Press Release, State Education Department Releases Spring 2015 Grades 3-8 Assessment Results (Aug. 12, 2015), available at http://bit.ly/1IGFZoh (last accessed Aug. 11, 2017). 2 N.Y.C. Independent Budget Office, 2016 Education Indicators Report, Student Demographics, available at http://bit.ly/2fNjjZX (last accessed Aug. 11, 2017). 3 N.Y.C. Coalition for Educational Justice, Looming Crisis or Historic Opportunity? Meeting the Challenge of the Regents Graduation Standards, (Feb. 2009), at 12, available at http://bit.ly/2aDHIQI (last accessed Aug. 11, 2017). 4 N.Y.C. Independent Budget Office, New York City Public School Indicators: Demographics, Resources, Outcomes (July 2014), at 15, available at http://bit.ly/VCzzTF (last accessed Aug. 11, 2017). 5 N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., Statistical Summaries, http://on.nyc.gov/1OGTF65 (last accessed Aug. 11, 2017). 4 shaping their students academically, developmentally, and emotionally.6 It is crucial for teachers to maintain appropriate boundaries with students. Blurring those lines threatens real and lasting consequences. Not only does it erode the trust and collaboration necessary to establish a constructive learning environment that helps students flourish during their school years, but it also gives students a distorted understanding of proper boundaries and makes them more susceptible to inappropriate encounters with their teachers and other future authority figures. Research further shows that when adolescent girls, in particular, are exposed to behavior objectifying women, such gender-biased treatment is likely to adversely affect their self-concept, achievement, and social and emotional adjustment.7 Further, the impact of the school experience extends beyond the classroom walls, because schools serve as important training grounds for learning appropriate boundaries with authority figures, so as to prepare students for higher education and workplace settings.8 B. The independent labor arbitrator’s determination that Williams should be dismissed from employment as a public schoolteacher With support from teachers’ unions, the Legislature has enacted a robust and detailed process for independent arbitral review of teacher disciplinary decisions. Educ. Law § 3020-a.9 In New York City, the 6 Angela M. Gibson, Jinhao Wang, and John R. Slate, Teachers Behaving Unprofessionally: Stories from Students, School of Arts & Humanities (2009). 7 Campbell Leaper, Perceived Experiences with Sexism Among Adolescent Girls, Child Development, Vol. 79 No. 3 (2008). 8 Jeanne Z. Hand and Laura Sanchez, Badgering or Bantering? Gender Differences in Experience of, and Reactions to, Sexual Harassment Among U.S. High School Students, Gender & Society, Vol. 14, No. 6 (2000). 9 See Memorandum from New York State United Teachers (March 29, 1977), Bill Jacket, L 1977, ch. 82; Memorandum from New York State Teachers Association Continued… 5 arbitrator is selected from a rotational panel of independent labor arbitrators whose makeup has been jointly agreed upon by the teachers’ union and DOE. See United Federation of Teachers Collective Bargaining Agreement, Art. 21(G)(2).10 Teachers facing discipline have the right to a hearing at which they may subpoena and cross-examine witnesses and testify in their own behalf. Educ. Law § 3020-a(3)(c). After the hearing, the independent arbitrator must issue a written decision detailing the findings of fact and conclusions on each charge and crafting an appropriate penalty. Id. § 3020-a(4)(a). By statute, judicial review of the arbitrator’s determination is limited to the grounds set forth in CPLR 7511: “misconduct, bias, excess of power or procedural defects.” Id. § 3020-a(5)(a). Here, Williams was a tenured DOE teacher who taught eighth- grade physical education classes at P.S./M.S. 282, in Brooklyn, New York (Record on Appeal (“R.”) 19, 275–77, 281). After a hearing, the independent arbitrator determined that, over a two-year period, Williams (a mid-thirties male who was married with children) had a pattern of inappropriately questioning female eighth-grade students about their female relatives, whom he appeared to view as potential romantic prospects (R. 77–78; see also R. 304). The evidence established that Williams’s misconduct came to light only after a student’s mother arrived at the school, visibly shaking and crying (R. 120-21). The mother had discovered that Williams asked her daughter, T.C., if she had any cute sisters, and, after learning that T.C. had a 23-year-old sister, solicited the sister’s phone number from T.C. and contacted the sister for a date (R. 114-15, 120). The mother was furious that Williams used her daughter as a vehicle to obtain dates (R. 120). (May 1, 1970), Bill Jacket, L 1970, ch. 717; Memorandum from New York State United Teachers (July 13, 1994), Bill Jacket, L 1994, ch. 691. 10 Education Law § 3020-a(3)(b) generally provides for the matter to go into arbitration under the auspices of American Arbitration Association. The statute, however, also permits this process to be modified pursuant to collective bargaining between the teachers’ union and DOE, as is the case here. See Educ. Law § 3020(1). 6 At the hearing, five female students consistently testified that Williams would ask on multiple occasions whether they had “cute” older sisters, how old they were, what they looked like, and if he could have their phone numbers (R. 77–78, 101, 107, 111, 113, 135–36, 162). According to T.C., Williams persistently asked for her 23-year-old sister’s phone number until she gave it to him (R. 162). One of the students disclosed that his conduct made her feel “kind of uncomfortable,” and another revealed that it made her feel “kind of aggravated” (R. 107, 135–36). Williams did not contest many of these facts. He admitted to engaging in at least 18 to 20 conversations with multiple female students about his potential romantic interest in their older female relatives (R. 77–78, 293, 303–04), and he admitted accepting from T.C. the phone number of her 23-year-old sister during one of these conversations (R. 79). Williams, however, insisted that the students initiated the conversations by showing him pictures of their sisters, aunts, or mothers and offering to set him up on dates with them (R. 286, 289, 290, 303, 314). When asked how many students presented him with photos, he said he would have to “sift through” his photos (evidently on his phone), demonstrating that he had retained such photos (R. 313–14). Williams claimed that he never told the students to stop because he did not want them to react badly; he recounted a prior experience at a different school when he upset a student after he told her to stop making similar comments (R. 286). He also insisted that T.C. gave her sister’s number to him on her own accord (R. 313). And he claimed that, in addition to the students who bombarded him about their female relatives, parents threw themselves at him (R. 304, 314). In a detailed and thorough decision, the arbitrator found that Williams’s conduct was “an abuse of his power and authority” and “miles beyond any appropriate boundary between teacher and student” (R. 88). The arbitrator credited the accounts of the students who testified that Williams initiated the inappropriate conversations and repeatedly pursued romantic inquires about their female relatives (R. 78–80). The arbitrator specifically rejected as not credible Williams’s claim that students had taken initiative to consistently urge him to take a romantic interest in their relatives, especially where he admitted it was known around the school community that he was married with a 7 new child (R. 78–81). Stressing that Williams was supposed to serve as a role model for his students, the arbitrator determined that he “abused that position for his own benefit, without regard to the lessons he was passing on to impressionable young girls” (R. 89). The arbitrator further emphasized that Williams did not seem to understand the seriousness of his conduct: he expressed no remorse at the hearing, despite his acknowledgment that he frequently conversed with female students about his potential romantic interest in their relatives, and instead shifted the blame to his students (R. 88-89). The arbitrator in fact noted that Williams appeared to “paint himself as a victim of some sort,” who suffered a constant onslaught of female attention (R. 89). Moreover, when asked whether he would do things differently, Williams merely stated that he would eliminate “downtime” during gym class (although he admitted that some of these conversations occurred during regular class time), and that he would make sure to report everything in writing to his supervisor (R. 297-98). He stated that he did not view himself as a role model for the students, failing to see any need to set an example for them (R. 314). The arbitrator also noted that he accepted and retained pictures of students’ female relatives, even though he claimed that he did not solicit them (R. 85). Even under Williams’s version of events, the arbitrator determined that discipline would still have been warranted because of his failure to recognize the harm of letting such inappropriate conversations continue unabated (R. 88). The arbitrator observed that if she “thought that a fine or suspension might jolt him into an understanding, and right the moral judgment which is so horribly askew, then [she] might consider such a penalty,” but found that such a penalty would not be effective or adequately address the harm done here (R. 89). Thus, the arbitrator concluded that dismissal was the appropriate penalty. D. Williams’s article 75 petition and the Appellate Division’s divided ruling remanding for redetermination of the penalty Williams filed an article 75 petition in Supreme Court, New York County, seeking to vacate the arbitration award (R. 14–55). Supreme 8 Court dismissed the petition on DOE’s motion, finding that the penalty of termination did not shock one’s sense of fairness (R. 10–12). In a split 4-1 decision, the First Department reversed Supreme Court’s dismissal of the petition and remanded for imposition of a lesser penalty, holding that the penalty of dismissal was shocking to one’s sense of fairness. Williams v. City of New York, 142 A.D.3d 901, 902 (1st Dep’t 2016), lv. granted, 2017 Slip Op 75382 (Jun. 1, 2017). The majority disagreed with the characterization that Williams’s conduct was romantic or sexual, or that it was designed to “solicit[] female companions for his sexual gratification.” Id. at 902. Although the majority acknowledged the inappropriateness of Williams’s actions, it found it relevant that Williams did not, in its view, violate any specific rule or regulation and had never been warned or reprimanded about his conduct. Id. The majority further emphasized that Williams had no prior allegations of misconduct during his 13-year career, and that there was no evidence that a lesser penalty would have been ineffective at causing Williams to stop his objectionable conduct. Id. Justice Tom dissented. Citing the limited scope of judicial review that governs these matters, Justice Tom echoed the arbitrator’s dismay over the egregious nature of the misconduct at issue, noting that Williams had “horribly miseducated his young students about student- teacher boundaries, proper and decent behavior, good moral conduct and about how they should view themselves and their female relatives.” Id. at 909 (dissenting op.). Justice Tom stressed the arbitrator’s findings that Williams showed no remorse for his conduct and further pointed out that he did not even have a spotless record, having received a prior unsatisfactory year-end review on unrelated charges. Id. at 906. Justice Tom also disagreed with the majority’s conclusion that Williams did not violate any rule or regulation, noting that the Education Law sets forth a general prohibition on “conduct unbecoming a teacher.” Id. at 907. Finding it “incredible” that “any adult—let alone a teacher—would not know that the conduct was improper,” id. at 911 (citations and quotation marks omitted), Justice Tom found that there was no question Williams had violated this rule. As Justice Tom emphasized, Williams’s conduct was “demeaning to women” and “[could] only serve to reinforce a wrongheaded sense” among his female students 9 “that their value is solely in their physical appearance and as objects of desire, that their older female relatives, and soon they, will be objects pursued even by those who are in positions of authority over them, who are tasked with molding them from children into adults.” Id. at 908–09. E. DOE’s appeal Following the First Department’s order, DOE moved in that court for leave to appeal (Aff. to Mot. for Lv., Ex. D). The First Department denied the motion, with Justice Tom dissenting (Aff. to Mot. for Lv., Ex. E). On remand, the case returned to the same arbitrator, who issued a second award imposing (1) a three-and-a-half year suspension beginning from the date of the first award and (2) a mandatory course addressing appropriate teacher-student boundaries and what it means for a teacher to be a role model (Aff. to Mot. for Lv., Ex. B, at 8–9). The arbitrator nevertheless maintained her disagreement with the First Department’s reasoning that Williams’s wrongdoing was mitigated by the absence of a rule or regulation expressly prohibiting his behavior, recognizing that “the Chancellor’s Regulations and the Department do require teachers to conduct themselves in a manner becoming the profession, and there is no reasonable argument to be made that this behavior does not violate that standard” (id., at 7). In June 2017, this Court granted DOE’s motion for leave to appeal from the arbitrator’s second award to review the prior non-final First Department’s order. CPLR 5602(a)(1)(ii). Meanwhile, Williams has filed another article 75 proceeding, challenging the second, lesser penalty as excessive (Aff. to Mot. for Lv., Ex. F). DOE’s motion to stay the second Article 75 proceeding, pending resolution of this appeal, is currently pending in Supreme Court. ARGUMENT Our other recent letter briefs in teacher disciplinary cases have covered how the First Department’s trend toward de novo review of arbitrators’ penalty determination contravenes both precedent and sound policy. See, e.g., Matter of Beatty v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., APL- 2017-00123, Ltr. Br. for Appellants, at 9-12. We will not repeat the material here, but rather only highlight two points along those lines. 10 First, as this Court made clear in Pell v. Board of Education, in reviewing a penalty for excessiveness, the courts must keep in mind that it is the public agency, and not the courts, that must answer to the public regarding the effectiveness of its operations. See 34 N.Y.2d 222, 235 (1974). This point applies here with special force: DOE has a critical mission to provide the City’s schoolchildren with quality instruction in a safe and supportive learning environment. In discharging this mission, DOE must answer to children, their parents, and the public. Teachers arguably play the most vital role in carrying out the mission: they are charged not only with providing quality instruction, but also with protecting the welfare of the children entrusted in their care. Indeed, the position of a public schoolteacher “by its very nature requires a degree of public trust not found in many other positions of public employment,” because teachers are responsible for the education and supervision of schoolchildren while they are away from the protection of their families. See Melzer v. Bd. of Educ., 336 F.3d 185, 198 (2d Cir. 2003). Teachers are also expected to be “role model[s] for [their] students, exerting a subtle but important influence over their perceptions and values.” Ambach v. Norwick, 441 U.S. 68, 78-79 (1979). The disciplinary process is an important means of ensuring that teachers fulfill these crucial responsibilities. Second, judicial review must also be informed by the Legislature’s decision to commit the determination of discipline for tenured teachers to independent arbitrators under a set of carefully prescribed procedures. The assigned arbitrator conducts a thorough hearing where he or she has the opportunity to observe the testimony of the charged teacher and other witnesses. This vantage point allows the arbitrator to assess credibility of testimony, genuineness of remorse, and sincerity of conviction—all of which are key in deciding penalty. A defined scope of judicial review is necessary both to accord proper respect to the arbitration as the central stage of the process and to acknowledge the arbitrator’s superior access to information relevant in crafting discipline. Thus, as the Court stressed in Pell, “the question is not whether [the court] might have imposed another or different penalty, but whether the agency charged with disciplinary responsibility reasonably acted within the scope of its powers.” Id. at 238. The sole criterion for vacating an arbitrator’s penalty as excessive is whether it 11 is “so disproportionate to the offenses as to be shocking to the court’s sense of fairness.” Pell, 34 N.Y.2d at 233; accord Lackow v. Dep’t of Educ., 51 A.D.3d 563, 569 (1st Dep’t 2008). Here, the arbitrator’s decision to dismiss Williams was well within the range of reasonable penalties. The arbitrator found that Williams had a persistent habit of asking his female eighth-grade students about their older sisters as potential romantic interests, including asking for their phone numbers and asking what they looked like (R. 78–80, 85). Williams himself admitted to having 18 to 20 such conversations over the two school years in question and also indicated that he had engaged in similar conversations with students at other schools in the past (R. 53, 286). While Williams claimed that students were the ones who broached the subject of whether he would be interested in dating their relatives, the arbitrator gave detailed reasons for rejecting that account as not credible and for instead crediting the contrary and consistent testimony of the five students who appeared at the hearing (R. 78–81). Williams’s chronic boundary-crossing compromised his students’ well-being: indeed, one testified that it made her feel “kind of uncomfortable,” and another acknowledged feeling “kind of aggravated.” The record also reflects that a student’s mother was understandably furious when she learned that Williams had obtained the phone number of her older daughter from the younger daughter in his class (R. 120). And as the dissent below observed more broadly, Williams’s conduct sent the harmful message to his young female students “that their value is solely in their physical appearance and as objects of desire, that their older female relatives, and soon they, will be objects pursued even by those who are in positions of authority over them, who are tasked with molding them from children into adults.” Id. at 908–09. In overriding the arbitrator’s judgment on penalty, the Appellate Division majority first erred in stressing that Williams did not, in its view, violate any specific rule or regulation and had never been warned or reprimanded about his conduct. Williams, 142 A.D.3d at 902. The Education Law expressly prohibits “conduct unbecoming a teacher,” Educ. Law § 3012(2)(a), and DOE rightly expects teachers to use their judgment and common sense in applying the rule. As the dissent noted, 12 “[i]t is incredible that any adult—let alone a teacher—would not know [this] conduct was improper” at the outset. Id. at 911 (dissenting op.). But even accepting the Appellate Division’s characterization, any lack of specificity in the rule, at bottom, would only raise the question whether a lesser penalty would be sufficient to ensure that Williams stopped his pattern of objectionable conduct. And the majority indeed seemed to focus on that point. Id. at 902. But the arbitrator hardly overlooked the question. To the contrary, the arbitrator specifically considered a lesser penalty and indicated she would have imposed such a penalty if she saw reason to think that it would “jolt” Williams into an understanding that would lead him to cease his inappropriate behavior (R. 89). It was only upon concluding that no lesser penalty would be effective that the arbitrator ordered dismissal (R. 89). That assessment was the arbitrator’s to make, not least because the arbitrator alone had the opportunity to take the measure of Williams by observing his testimony, comportment, and demeanor. And the written record by itself confirms the arbitrator’s determination as reasonable. Williams expressed no remorse for his conduct, as the arbitrator rightly pointed out. See McGraham, 17 N.Y.3d at 919, 920 (deferring to arbitrator’s findings of remorse). But that was only the beginning: instead of taking any form of responsibility, Williams continually shifted blame onto his young students (R. 289-90, 303, 314). The arbitrator well explained why she rejected his attempt to “paint himself as a victim of some sort” who suffered a constant onslaught of female attention (R. 89). Indeed, the record showed that Williams accepted and retained pictures of the students’ female relatives, despite his claim that he did not solicit them and his suggestion that they were thrust upon him unwillingly (R. 85). Williams also openly admitted that he did not view himself as a role model, failing to see any need to set an example for students (R. 314). And when Williams was asked whether he would do anything differently going forward, he simply answered that he would eliminate “downtime” during gym class and would make sure to document his interactions with students in writing and report them to his supervisor (R. 297–98). Before returning Williams to the classroom, it was reasonable to look for him to demonstrate an understanding of core 13 responsibilities of the teaching role and a commitment to fulfilling them in the future. The arbitrator reasonably found that he fell short on both counts. Nor is there any merit to the majority’s assertion that Williams’s conduct could not be characterized as “romantic” or “sexual.” Id. at 902. The arbitrator specifically stated that the “conversations generally involved whether [Williams] might have a romantic interest in some of the students’ older female relatives” (R. 70). The testimony of multiple female students also included concrete examples of Williams asking them about what their relatives looked like, whether they were cute, whether those relatives were in a relationship, and whether he could see photographs of them and be given their phone numbers. The arbitrator thus had ample basis to find that Williams intended to form a romantic and possibly an intimate relationship with his adolescent students’ older siblings and female relatives.11 At a minimum, he gave his young students that distinct impression, which is equally important. To the extent that the majority meant to point out that he did not pursue romantic relationships with the students themselves, that fact is fortunate but hardly exonerating. The majority gave short shrift to the harms stemming from behavior like Williams’s: such conduct can distort students’ understanding of appropriate student-teacher boundaries and erode their trust in teachers or other authority figures. Williams’s conduct was not “an isolated instance” (R. 89), but rather a repeated pattern which conveyed to students that they were means to serve his ends. Nor are bright lines easily drawn here: after all, Williams targeted female students for the conversations, and some might have interpreted his asking whether they had cute older sisters to imply that he found them physically attractive. 11 The arbitrator dismissed the charge specifically alleging that Williams had texted T.C.’s older sister because it was directly supported only by T.C.’s hearsay report that her sister and mother had made statements to that effect (R. 87-88). But this does not establish that Williams never acted on information when he managed to extract it from his students, much less that he never intended to do so. 14 The Appellate Division’s decision likewise cannot be justified based on Williams’s lack of disciplinary history. 142 A.D.3d at 902. The record in fact shows that Williams received an unsatisfactory rating for the school year previous to those at issue here (R. 20). Nor did Williams introduce affirmative evidence of a positive record, aside from his own testimony. In essence, the majority pointed to the mere absence of prior charges against him, but that does not prove that his behavior was always appropriate. The point is illustrated by Williams’s admission that he engaged in similar conversations with students at his prior school.12 In any event, the Court has cautioned courts against allowing “prior good records of service” to outweigh “the nature of the misconduct charge.” Pell, 34 N.Y.2d at 239. This case helps show why: Williams’s previously clean record would be cold comfort to parents, students, administrators, and the public if Williams were returned to the classroom and his pattern of behavior were later discovered to have continued. In the end, the sole question on review is whether the arbitrator’s determination to dismiss Williams is “shocking to one’s sense of fairness.” Even if the Appellate Division majority had presented a plausible case for a lesser penalty, this would only show that there is ground for difference of opinion. It would not change the fact that the arbitrator’s chosen penalty is well within the range of reasonable judgments and, accordingly, must be sustained. 12 That the prior school never filed charges against Williams may have been for reasons unrelated to guilt: the school may have been unaware of his inappropriate conduct, perhaps the affected students were unwilling to cooperate with the investigation, or maybe a different school administrator looked the other way, as sometimes occurs. C. Conclusion This Court should permit full briefing and argument in this case. If the Court grants this request, DOE asks that the Court coordinate the briefing and oral argument among this appeal and the Bolt and Beatty appeals currently pending (see supra, at p. 1). In the alternative, this Court should reverse the Appellate Division’s decision and order and dismiss the petition. Respectfully submitted, tfcfy Qw\j]g/K/$Q Assistant Corporation Counsel Richard Dearing of Counsel cc: Bryan Glass, Esq. Counsel for Petitioner-Respondent Terrell Williams 100 Church Street, 8th Floor New York, NY 10007 15 CERTIFICATION OF COMPLIANCE I hereby certify that this letter brief was prepared using Microsoft Word 2010, and according to that software, it contains 5,191 words in the body of the submission. Cl/mg Park 16
