2 hours ago
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It’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth.
The powerful union repping Central Park’s carriage horse drivers is suing animal advocacy group NYCLASS over an alleged multi-million dollar smear campaign aimed at banning the industry from the Big Apple.
The nonprofit group falsely portrayed Gotham’s carriage drivers as abusive through a series of “malicious lies and misinformation” spanning decades — including the cause of death for a string of horses collapsing on city streets, the Transport Workers Union charged in a Monday lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court.
“NYCLASS has promoted a false narrative for far too long,” TWU International President John Samuelsen said in a statement. “It has demonized a whole class of workers, mostly immigrants who came to New York City for the American Dream, as animal abusers, and that is absolutely false.”
The advocacy group wrongly “capitalized” on the tragic deaths of carriage horses Lady and Aysha, who died in 2025 and 2020, respectively, the lawsuit claimed.
While Lady died of natural causes and Aysha was lost to an undetected disease, according to medical records, advocates tweeted that the deaths stemmed from “neglect,” court papers said.
Medical records show Aysha was given a clean bill of health after an October 2019 exam, but NYCLASS argued her handlers should have noticed the warning signs — as the mare died just months later.
The animal abuse claim has gained so much steam, the union claimed in court filings, that it has become the basis for Ryder’s Law — a City Council bill that, if passed, would phase out horse carriages from Central Park altogether.
Mayor Eric Adams voiced support for the ban in September, when he issued an executive order to crack down on the “increasingly incompatible” vestiges of old New York after four carriage horses ran wild in three separate incidents over the summer.
“For years, New Yorkers have witnessed horses collapsing and even dying on our streets, spooking and running wild in traffic, crashing into cars and injuring people,” Edita Birnkrant, NYCLASS’ executive director, told The Post, arguing cities across the globe have started shutting down horse-drawn carriages.
“More are continuing to do so every year to protect public safety and animal welfare.”
Birnkrant pointed to recent polls that have shown a majority of New Yorkers backing the removal of “horse carriages from Midtown.”
NYCLASS is also being accused, in the court filing, of spreading a “pattern of lies” about carriage owners sending horses to slaughter – and that lame carriage horse Bernard, who was found at an infamous livestock auction in 2024, was sold as a riding horse by his Big Apple driver and later re-sold through a third party.
“This is NYCLASS’ pattern” that dates back to 2009, the lawsuit said.
“NYCLASS falsely and maliciously claims that anything wrong with a horse is the result of the horse carriage drivers, blatantly ignoring medical evidence and facts to the contrary to mislead the public and destroy the horse carriage drivers’ ability to earn a living,” the filing added.
The union is seeking up to $1 million in damages for “torturously” interfering with the tourist attraction.
“NYCLASS has torturously interfered with this business relationship and targeted the public — including both current and potential customers — with knowingly false claims in order to ban the horse carriage industry in New York City,” the lawsuit contended.
The union also slammed the nonprofit’s brazen real estate interests, pointing to an advocacy brochure that reportedly touts replacing horse-drawn carriages “will create a windfall for the carriage industry from the sale of its multimillion dollar stables alone,” and result in city-tax revenues reportedly of up to nearly $2 million.
NYCLASS founder and president Stephen Nislick, who has fought for years to shut down the horse carriage industry, is a former real estate executive.
If he gets his wish, the advocacy group said Nislick plans to stay out of the redevelopment of the stables.
“From day one, Mr. Nislick made an ironclad pledge to not be involved in any development projects connected to the midtown stables,” NYCLASS said in a statement. “Beyond this, he will sign an agreement stating that, even if the stables were offered to him for free, he would not accept ownership of the land in any shape or form.”
English (US)