Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is suing to block a new law that would pay paraprofessionals a $10,000 bonus — even though Mamdani himself publicly supported that policy on the campaign trail.

The lawsuit puts Mamdani in a difficult political position: arguing against a unanimously passed bill to boost the pay of some of the city’s lowest-wage workers, who start at just around $32,000 a year to support children with disabilities.

It also pits him against not just the City Council, but the teachers’ union, which has championed the law as a way to fill more than 1,800 vacant paraprofessional positions.

“This should have never come to this, to be at this moment, in the end of August, the middle of August, and us facing this crisis over and over again and saying we have to solve it,” United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said. “The mayor understood what the crisis was, which is why he always supported this legislation. And he promised that he would do it for the paras and the children who need their paras.”

The bill became law on Wednesday. Hours later, in a statement, a spokesman for the mayor said the administration would sue — accusing the City Council of undermining and bypassing unions by legislating payment outside the collective bargaining process.

He said: “We will not allow the political process to replace the collective bargaining table. The City is filing a lawsuit to protect the right of every union to negotiate on behalf of its members, to fight for the workplace they deserve and ensure that workers — not politicians — determine their own futures.”

Mulgrew responded: “The fact that they’re trying to blame City Council is a little ridiculous.”

And it’s certainly a different tune than the mayor sang when he received Mulgrew’s endorsement thirteen months ago, referring to a previous version of the bill:

“I would be proud to continue to support the swift passage of Intro 1261, a piece of legislation introduced by Council member Keith Powers that addresses the fact that there are too many open positions right now for paraprofessionals across the city because that job simply doesn’t pay enough,” Mamdani said in July of 2025.

Mulgrew said he isn’t surprised by the about-face.

“Throughout my tenure as president of the UFT, I have never seen a mayor not get sandbagged or manipulated by the agencies of New York City,” he said.

In recent weeks, Mamdani has said he now believes the one-time bonuses to paraprofessionals violate the state’s Taylor Law, which governs public labor unions, likely to be the crux of the legal argument.

“Well, it’s very telling that they didn’t ask for an injunction — because they know they can’t win it,” Mulgrew sad.

City Council Speaker Julie Menin told NY1 a day before the lawsuit was filed that the council was ready for any legal challenge to the bill.

“We will vigorously defend this law,” Menin said. “This law was supported by every single member of the City Council across a very wide ideological spectrum.”

The mayor’s spokesman said the administration wants to engage in productive talks with the UFT to boost para pay permanently.

But Mulgrew said the city’s Office of Labor Relations has previously refused to budge from its insistence that all members of a union receive the same percentage raise, making it impossible for paras to catch up. He said OLR has told him if paras want a bigger raise, teachers need to get a smaller one, or paras need to work a longer school year, even when kids aren’t in class.

Mulgrew said the mayor needs to stand up to his own agencies.

“We’re making very good progress recently with the mayor and his top administration officials. His agencies, no,” Mulgrew said. “But we are making significant progress to come up with a permanent solution.”