Council Speaker Menin backs ban on NYC horse carriages ahead of hearing

City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced her support late Tuesday for a bill that would end the New York City carriage horse industry — with the Council set to hold a hearing on the legislative effort Wednesday morning.

The legislative effort — nicknamed Romanch’s Law, after the teenager killed by a bolting horse last month — would ban the issuing of new licenses for carriage horse operators, and would fully end horse-drawn carriage tours by June 2028.

“Last month, 18-year-old Romanch Mahajan was killed after he was thrown from a horse-drawn carriage while visiting New York City to celebrate his high school graduation. His death was heartbreaking, and it was preventable,” Menin, D-Manhattan, said in a statement.

“That tragedy is why I have decided to support Romanch’s Law, legislation that would begin the transition away from horse-drawn carriages as a tourist attraction in Central Park — for the safety of New Yorkers, visitors from around the world and the horses themselves,” she said.

The bill is the latest in a years-long effort by animal rights activists and others to ban the carriage rides, which have long been associated with tourism in Central Park. Opponents of the industry have characterized the work as inherently abusive to the horses and dangerous to bystanders.

The bill, previously named Ryder’s Law after a horse that died in 2022, has received a groundswell of additional support since the June death of Mahajan.

Mahajan, 18, had traveled to New York City with his family from India. He, his little brother and their parents were sitting in a horse-drawn carriage during a sightseeing tour when the driver offered to take their photo. While the driver was out of the carriage, the horse bolted — tossing Mahajan’s mother from the vehicle.

The teen jumped after her, but hit his head along the way, knocking him unconscious. He died a short time later.

The death — the first recorded human fatality in Gotham’s carriage-horse industry — shocked the city. Mahajan’s family called on the City Council and Mayor Mamdani to ban carriage horses immediately.

Menin scheduled a hearing on the proposed carriage-horse ban, while a separate piece of proposed legislation — a bill put forth by Council Member James Gennaro, D-Queens, intended to improve driver training, install hitching posts in the park and study industry best practices — appeared to be on ice.

In the weeks since, two Council members who had signed on as co-sponsors of the Gennaro bill — Health Committee Chairperson Lynn Schulman, D-Queens, and Oswald Feliz, D-Bronx — signed on to be co-sponsors of Romach’s Law. Kamillah Hanks, D-Staten Island, and Inna Vernikov, R-Brooklyn, have also signed on in the past week.

“I’m obviously supportive of both, but I think given what we continue to see, including the real public safety risks that are being created due to these rides, I think it’s time to take the broader approach, which is just to ban the rides,” Feliz told The News.

In all, 21 of the city’s 51 Council members, not including Menin, had signed on as co-sponsors as of Tuesday evening.

Council member Christopher Marte, the sponsor of Romanch’s Law, praised the speaker for backing the bill.

“I want to thank Speaker Menin for her support of Romanch’s Law and for her leadership in recognizing the urgency of this moment,” Marte said in a statement. “Romanch’s death was preventable, and the speaker’s leadership brings us closer to finally ending an industry that has put passengers, workers, parkgoers and horses at risk for too long.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both on the campaign trail and as mayor, has been supportive of a ban on horse carriages.

Mamdani told reporters Tuesday that he supports “the spirit of the bill,” but said he was “critical of the insufficiencies of the worker protections.” The mayor said his office would be working with the Council “to address those concerns.”

A representative of the Transport Workers Union, which represents some 150 carriage horse owners and drivers, said Tuesday that “the mayor is right to be concerned about worker protections.”

Alexander Kemp, TWU Local 100’s administrative vice president, argued the bill had no protections for the carriage owners and drivers.

The proposed legislation would require the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to administer a workforce development program for those who currently own or drive carriage horses.

But in a statement to The News Tuesday, Kemp said such a program “would do nothing to put food on the tables of drivers and their families, or alleviate the debt they went into so they could obtain medallions from the city.”

In a letter to the City Council Tuesday, Kemp asked the Council to reconsider taking up Council member Gennaro’s bill, which would require safety studies and greater enforcement but allow the industry to continue.

“Instead of rushing to discard workers’ livelihoods and an age-old New York tradition, I urge the City Council to pause efforts to ban this industry, which would cause so much collateral damage.” Kemp wrote. “The Council can instead govern and enact new safety measures, including enhanced driver training, tougher driver exams and installation of hitching posts.”

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