Lawsuit against the Department of Health (DOH) On October 28th, 1999, ferret owners and the New York Humane Society filed a lawsuit against Mayor Giuliani and the NYC Department of Health (DOH) stating that the Department of Health did not have the authority to ban ferrets in the City of New York. Unfortunately, the judges stated that the courts have very little authority to overturn any decision made by the DOH. Legally, they cannot interfere with most of what they do. Consequently, the lawsuit against Mayor Giuliani and the Department of Health was dismissed. You can read more about it in our Lawsuit section.
Kathryn Freed's bill to legalize ferrets (Intro 627-A) Council Member
Kathryn Freed, a long time animal advocate on the City Council, introduced
a bill (a bill is law in progress) to legalize ferrets in New York City.
The City Council passed the bill but then Mayor Giuliani
vetoed it (turned it down). The City Council had the option to try
to overturn the Mayor's veto, but that didn't happen for several reasons.
The end result is that we were about 4 votes short of being able to overturn
the Mayor's veto. If you'd like to read some of the past information on
this bill and what happened, it's all in our section on
Writing to NYC Council Members This isn't really a past legalization effort but when there are no current legalization efforts taking place, writing Council Members has a limited impact. It mostly serves as a reminder that you'd like them to support ferret legalization efforts if they take place again sometime in the future. If future efforts to legalize ferrets do take place again in NYC, it certainly wouldn't hurt for your Council Member to have received several notes on the subject. Past information on writing to NYC Council Members.
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