ALBANY, N.Y. - New York's judges have taken their long-standing battle for bigger paychecks into court, suing the state for higher salaries and back pay.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday comes about two months after Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state lawmakers ended the legislative session at an impasse over legislative and judicial salaries.
The complaint argues that connecting the two violated the state constitution's separation of powers doctrine. New York's highest paid state judge makes $156,000 a year.
It also argues that the governor and the Legislature have "unlawfully impounded" $69.5 million they allocated in the budget for judicial salary increases.
"The concept of judicial independence goes back to the founding of our country," said lead attorney George Bundy Smith, who's a former New York Court of Appeals associate judge. "By connecting judicial salaries to legislators' salaries and to political issues of the executive and legislative branches, the state undermines the independence of judges."
The lawsuit asks the court to order release of the money allocated for judicial pay raises as well as cost-of-living adjustments of 9 percent per year dating back to 2000.
Christine Anderson, Spitzer's spokeswoman, said Wednesday that the governor wants the state's judges to get raises, but he doesn't believe litigation is the way to get them.
The governor has left it up to the Legislature to call itself back to Albany for a special session to deal with the matter, Anderson said.
The suit could put some judges - who haven't had a pay raise since 1999 - in the unusual position of presiding over a case that ultimately will affect them personally.
Four judges - three in New York city and one in Cattaraugus County - are named as plaintiff's in the suit. The New York Law Journal reported on its Web site Wednesday that three other judges have filed a similar suit in Albany County.
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