New York City Council passed a veto-proof ban ending horse-drawn carriages by June 2028, closing a century-old Central Park trade and leaving roughly 200 drivers without compensation.
Council members approved the measure Thursday on a 40-7 vote with two abstentions, rejecting a last-minute amendment that would have delayed both the tally and the ban itself. The bill, known as Romanch’s Law, now goes to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who must sign it and who PIX11 reported supports the final version.
The vote ends a working tradition tied to Central Park and puts carriage owners and drivers on a hard countdown. Union leaders say the package leaves them without proper protections and have already promised court action. The fight over livelihoods and city power is the same one tracked in earlier coverage of the legal fight looming as Mamdani advances the ban.
Council Member Christopher Marte introduced the bill this year. Speaker Julie Menin noted a similar measure first appeared 19 years ago. After decades of animal-rights pressure, the council finally locked in a phase-out that takes effect across all five boroughs on June 1, 2028.
Supporters framed the ban around Romanch Mahajan, an 18-year-old tourist killed when a horse bolted. Family members spoke outside City Hall before the vote, pressing the safety case and asking New Yorkers not to forget him.
Gaurav Mahajan, the young man’s uncle, put the demand in plain terms.
"True justice means recognizing that these gentle, majestic horses do not belong on the congested asphalt or trapped in dangerous traffic,"
He added a final appeal on behalf of the parents and brother:
"On behalf of his parents and his brother, I leave New Yorkers with one final sacred request: please do not forget Romanch."
Deepak Mahajan, the father, struck the same note in comments carried by the New York Post, saying the death should not be in vain. The Post also reported that about 200 carriage drivers stand to lose their work under the citywide ban and that the industry plans to sue because the bill offers no monetary compensation.
Central Park Conservancy CEO Betsy Smith backed the ban shortly after the vote, arguing modern traffic has turned the old practice into a hazard for visitors, drivers, and horses.
"In the modern era, carriages pose a serious, and even fatal, safety risk to Park visitors, carriage drivers, and the horses themselves."
Smith also recalled the park’s 1858 founding as a quiet refuge when horses and buggies were ordinary city life. That history now collides with a progressive council majority ready to erase the trade rather than tighten rules around it. Parallel fights over how City Hall handles workers and neighborhoods have already surfaced in the push that left carriage workers facing shaky futures.
Carriage workers came to City Hall in tophats to defend their jobs. Jill Adamski, a horse carriage driver, rejected the portrait of neglect.
"We are horse people who care deeply about our animals and that’s the whole reason we get into this industry,"
She pressed the point further:
"We’re very highly regulated and I don’t understand why someone can come in and say that I’m doing the opposite, when all we do is love our horses and take care of them all day."
Alexander Kemp of TWU Local 100 answered the passage with a short vow: “We will see them in court.” Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen went further, calling the bill a train wreck of constitutional and due process violations, anti-worker, and theft. Those are not abstract complaints. They describe a city writing an industry out of existence on a fixed date while offering no paycheck bridge for the people who built it.
Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels and a former mayoral candidate, treated the outcome as the end of a long campaign that began in the late ’60s and ’70s. “Why did these horses have to suffer so long?” he asked, then added that at least the horses will be free. That framing celebrates the animals and shrugs past the working New Yorkers now staring at 2028 with empty stables and no severance.
Mayor Mamdani’s signature is the last formal step. The source reporting makes clear he backs the final text. That places the end of a more-than-century-old Central Park fixture squarely inside his administration’s priorities, alongside other City Hall moves that have already drawn council friction, including the housing board pick who drew resistance over “cartels” rhetoric.
President Donald Trump took the opposite view on Truth Social, calling the shutdown sad and rooted largely in one tragic accident.
"So sad to see the beloved Central Park Horse-drawn Carriage Industry ending after over a Century, based largely on one tragic accident,"
He closed: “Another piece of History that’s gone. It will be missed!” The post states the stakes without apology: a working landmark disappears, and the people who ran it are left to absorb the loss.
Council math made the result veto-proof. Forty yes votes buried the seven no votes and two abstentions. The delay amendment failed. The phase-out date is locked for June 1, 2028. What remains unsettled is whether the courts will force the city to confront the due-process and compensation claims the union has already teed up. That same pattern of aggressive City Hall initiatives and institutional pushback has marked other Mamdani-era fights, from policing oversight shifts to the later council confirmation of his housing choice.
Romanch’s Law turns one family’s grief into a citywide industrial ban. It also turns a regulated trade into a countdown for roughly 200 drivers who say they love the animals they work with every day. The council chose abolition on a schedule. It did not choose a transition that pays the people it is putting out of business.
When City Hall can erase a century of honest work with a vote and a signature, working New Yorkers learn fast who the rules actually protect.
