Josefina Aguirre is one of hundreds of small business owners now represented in two lawsuits filed against New York City by the Multicultural Business Coalition, a group representing roughly 1,000 minority-owned bodegas, delis, and supermarkets.
The group argues that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open city-run grocery stores will drive them out of business rather than help their neighborhoods.
The coalition filed a class-action complaint in the New York County Supreme Court on Aug. 24, alleging antitrust violations and predatory pricing, and a second suit the same day alleging that the city retaliated against members after they began organizing against the mayor’s plan.
Together, the suits mark one of the most direct legal challenges yet to a marquee policy of Mamdani’s first year in office.
The first complaint states, “The Defendants’ municipal grocery stores deny the Class Members, hundreds of grocers, many small grocers equal protection, as they are not able to offer discounts that markedly depart from globalized commerce, thereby violating New York’s Civil Rights Law.”
The second suit states that the “opening of the underlying municipal grocery stores … is diametrically opposed to the City’s longstanding reasons for refusing to allow Walmart to operate grocery stores in the City: that the fallout from allowing Walmart to operate deep discount business, while bringing ‘affordability,’ further enriching a multibillion-dollar business, would eliminate an untold amount of opportunity for minority businesses, and small business at large.”
Mamdani responded to the suits the same day they were filed.
“I’m confident in both the legality of this—that it will stand up in court—and the importance of delivering it,” he said at an Aug. 24 news conference.
Frank Garcia, the coalition’s chairman and head of the New York State Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, said the mayor’s confidence misses what’s actually at stake for the coalition’s members.
“My grandfather opened up one of the first bodegas in the late 1960s, when East Harlem was burning,” he told The Epoch Times.
“I am proud to be following in his tradition, because what Mayor Mamdani is doing is disgracing his memory.”
Inside the $70 Million Plan
Under the plan, first unveiled last year, the city will spend $70 million to open five publicly owned grocery stores, one in each borough, offering staples at prices roughly 30 percent below market rate.
The stores won’t sell beer, cigarettes, or lottery tickets and will be designed to keep prices low rather than turn a profit. The goal, Mamdani has said, is to make food more affordable in neighborhoods with high poverty rates and limited access to full-service supermarkets.
The Bronx location, in an affordable housing complex in Hunts Point, is expected to open in 2027. The East Harlem store will be located at the 9,000-square-foot marketplace La Marqueta and is projected to open in 2029, according to city officials.
Garcia said the coalition tried repeatedly to meet with Mamdani before filing suit, without success, and that the city moved ahead without ever conducting an economic impact study.
“Why are they going against immigrant business owners who can’t speak English and defend themselves?” Garcia said. “I don’t see that the mayor is being fair.”
Mark Jaffe, general counsel for the Multicultural Business Coalition and president of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, told The Epoch Times that the city’s plan goes further than officials have admitted.
“Their plan is to eventually put every independent store owner out of business,” Jaffe said. “And if you’re lucky, maybe they’ll give you a job.”
—Russ Jones
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