Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter to Retire in August

July 12, 2019

Mayor Bill de Blasio today announced that Zachary W. Carter, the City’s Corporation Counsel, will be retiring from his post at the end of August of this year. When he retires, Carter will have served nearly six years as the City’s chief legal officer, one the City’s longest-serving in the history of the Law Department.
 
“On behalf of the entire City, I want to thank Zach for his almost six years of dedicated service,” said Mayor de Blasio. “Zach is one of our City’s finest public servants. During his tenure, he has stood for fairness and equity, as is evident by his work settling with the Central Park Five and victims of the unconstitutional and unjust Stop and Frisk era. He has moved our Law Department forward, and our City is better off for it.”

“It has been my privilege to lead the finest government law office in the country. The dedicated lawyers and support professionals of the Law Department are without peer in their knowledge of the specialized areas of law implicated in the extraordinarily varied operations of dozens of agencies that provide essential services spanning education,  housing, environmental protection, law enforcement and public health. I will be forever grateful to the Mayor for giving me the opportunity to provide legal support for this administration’s policies and to participate in a quest to make this a thriving, fair and equitable city,” said Zachary W. Carter, Corporation Counsel.

During his tenure, Carter resolved longstanding litigation, ushering in a new era of equity and justice for the City. Memorable settlements range from the overuse of stop and frisk and the Central Park Five case to excessive uses of force at Rikers Island and the underrepresentation racial minorities in the ranks of FDNY, all on terms that reconciled the values of fairness and equity with the obligation to keep New Yorkers safe.

Carter has also implemented numerous changes at the Law Department which have made the Department more effective in carrying out its mission. Last year, he launched a Strategic Litigation initiative to expand the City’s impact litigation efforts and expanded the Family Court Division to handle increased caseloads after the City lobbied for and the State passed Raise the Age Laws so 16 and 17 year olds can no longer be charged as adults.
 
Carter oversees a staff of nearly 1000 lawyers and approximately 700 support professionals who defend the City, its agencies and employees in litigation, initiate lawsuits to advance the City’s interest, provide legal support for critical functions of all city agencies and ensure that the policies advanced by the City’s administration are grounded in sound principles of law.
 
Carter was appointed in 2014, having previously served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and as both a Criminal Court and United States Magistrate Judge. When Carter steps down in August, Georgia Pestana, the agency’s First Assistant Corporation Counsel, will serve as Acting Corporation Counsel.  The City is launching a national search for Carter’s replacement.