Bobbie Anne Cox: How I Secured a Landmark Victory Suing the Governor of New York Over ‘Quarantine Camp’ Regulation

“I was told, ‘Why are you doing this? You’re gonna ruin your career … you can’t win. You can’t beat the governor.’”

A real estate lawyer in New York for over two decades, Bobbie Anne Cox shifted gears after seeing government officials unwilling to let go of emergency powers they gained during the pandemic. She recently secured a landmark victory against New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s controversial “quarantine camps” regulation.

“So, they basically took the language from that bill that had failed for seven years, they tweaked it a little bit, and then they made it a regulation,” explains Cox. “It is wholly unconstitutional … Forced isolation and quarantine procedures with no due process? No, not in our country.”

Cox says that when a government seizes power from the people, it never returns that power voluntarily. It is up to the people to demand it back.

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Below is a rush transcript of this American Thought Leaders episode from Nov 5, 2022. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

Jan Jekielek:
Bobby Anne Cox. It’s such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Bobby Anne Cox:
Yes. Thank you for having me on. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Mr. Jekielek:
I’ve got this headline from the Epoch Times in front of me. Judge strikes down New York City vaccine mandates. A very popular article New Yorkers are celebrating in the streets. Well, at least some of them. What is your reaction?

Ms. Cox:
So, it’s a great decision. I read the decision from the judge. Absolutely. Fantastic. It’s very similar to a decision that I got in my case back in July with the quarantine camps. And it’s fabulous. I mean, the decision specifically states that those 16 petitioners, the plaintiffs in that case should immediately be reinstated to have their jobs back with back pay. So, it is a wonderful decision.

Unfortunately, the city has already filed their notice of appeal. They’re starting the appeal process, which is something that’s very standard. Not long ago, we saw a judge in New York City, actually, it was the same judge, Judge Porzio, New York State Supreme Court judge in New York City. He struck down the same vaccine mandate for a fireman that had brought a lawsuit and specifically struck it down. Same thing. Immediately, the city appeals the decision. So, now they’re fighting on appeal. And we even saw last year, in 2021, a New York State Supreme Court judge had struck down the vaccine mandate for a police officer. But same thing, it was immediately appealed by the city. So, we’re seeing this pattern of they’re just not letting it go. The city is fighting to try and keep their mandates.

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, and this strikes me as so odd frankly, because you kind of always imagine New York City as supporting its city workers, whether it’s firemen, whether it’s policemen, whether it’s sanitation workers. What do you think is going on?

Ms. Cox:
Well, we’re seeing a lot of government overreach. That seems to be an underlying theme that’s going on in not just New York, but in the country. And so this has become a trend, and they really want to exert power that they don’t have. It’s not powers they’re given as per the Constitution. And so it’s very upsetting because we’re seeing it at all levels. We’re seeing it at the city level, the state level, and the federal level.

Mr. Jekielek:
So, these are powers that are coming from these emergency authorizations or emergencies being declared.

Ms. Cox:
It depends on the situation. Sometimes the executive branch is just giving themselves the power and they don’t actually have the power, which was the case with my quarantine lawsuit. The governor and the Department of Health literally just gave themselves the power to issue isolation and quarantine procedures. And the attitude is kind of like, “Well, we know we can’t do this, but we’re going to do it anyway.” And then the theory is, catch me if you can, come get me if you can, bring a lawsuit, put me back in my place if you can; if you can’t, well, I’m just going to keep this power that I’ve given to myself.

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, so, of course, I want to talk to you very badly about this, the isolation and quarantine procedures regulation, which you challenged basically Governor Hochul on, but the origins of this, if I understand the genesis of this regulation, actually stems back to Cuomo still somehow. Can you give me a sense of what this is? And it’s actually kind of shocking to most people that I’ve ever talked to about this, that such idea could even be sort of talked about in polite company, so to speak. But lay it out for me here.

Ms. Cox:
Yes, you’re exactly right. It did start with Cuomo. And actually, it started a little bit before that. So I’ll just go back a little bit. Before in 2015, there was an Ebola outbreak. Most people probably weren’t aware of it because it wasn’t something like COVID-19. But as a result of that, there was a New York state assemblyman. His name was Nick Perry. He was an assemblyman, a democrat from Brooklyn. And what he did was he proposed a law, starting in 2015 for seven years straight through the end of 2021. And he actually, in 2021, he was appointed by Biden to become the ambassador to Jamaica. So, he’s no longer a New York state assemblymen. But for seven years, while he was an assemblyman, he did propose this bill, which was very similar to the regulation that I got struck down.

That Bill specifically said, in essence, the governor and the Department of Health could pick and choose which New Yorkers they could lock up or lock down in quarantine or isolation if they thought you had a communicable disease. And so it failed that bill for seven years. In fact, if you combine the number of New York State senators and New York State Assembly members, you get a total of 213 members of the New York State legislature. Not one of them would get behind that bill. It never went to a vote. It never even got out of committee. It was introduced in the health committee in the assembly.

And, in fact, the Democrat chairman of that committee made a public statement in 2021 and said, “We’re not even going to vote on this,” because people were getting so upset they had learned about this bill and they were just so upset about the thought of being forced into isolation or quarantine with no proof that you were even sick. So, it was denounced. It was never brought to a vote. And ultimately, assemblyman Nick Perry withdrew it. So, he withdrew it from consideration. So what happens, well, now in March of 2020, when Cuomo is still the governor, emergency powers are given to him by the New York State legislature because of COVID-19, this pandemic, we don’t know what this is, this is crazy. Everybody’s so scared.

So, they voted, they gave him emergency powers, which had never been done before. And what they did was they allowed him to… They called it directives. They allowed him to issue directives. What that really meant was he was allowed to make law. That in and of itself is unconstitutional. The legislative branch can’t delegate their law-making power to another branch of government. But they did. And for a whole year, Cuomo had this power. And when he got this power in March of 2020, he then passed it on to his commissioner of health. And that’s when this regulation was made.

So, they basically took the language from that bill that had failed for seven years. They tweaked it a little bit, and then they made it a regulation. And they said, We have this authority because, look, we got these emergency powers. And the problem was that once Cuomo lost those powers in March of 2021, the power to make that regulation should have also disappeared. But it didn’t. And the Department of Health just kept issuing that same regulation over and over again every couple of months. And then in August of 2021, Governor Cuomo steps down, Kathy Hochul rises from Lieutenant Governor to governor, and she has her Department of Health continue to issue this same isolation and quarantine procedures regulation. She was never given an emergency power by the legislature. She didn’t have the authority to do that. And that’s when I found out about it and I said, “Absolutely not. I have to bring a lawsuit. This is totally unconstitutional.”

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, and just lay out for me exactly what this regulation says. Now I understand why you describe it as a law masquerading as a regulation. What does it actually allow the government to do? Lay it out.

Ms. Cox:
So, the isolation and quarantines procedure regulation would allow the Department of Health to choose which New Yorkers they could lock up or lock down. They could have locked you up in your home or they could have removed you from your home and locked you into a facility of their choosing. There was absolutely no restraint in this regulation. So, they could have locked you up for days, for weeks, for months, no restraint. They could have told you where you went. You had no choice. You couldn’t just say, “Oh, I’ll walk down in my home.” No, they could remove you from your home if they wanted to. They didn’t have to prove that you were sick. They didn’t have to prove you were exposed to a communicable disease, no age restrictions.

So, they could have done this to you, your child, your grandchild, your elderly parent. They could have used law enforcement. So you could have gotten a knock on your door from the local police or the sheriff. “I’m sorry, you need to come with us. We have an issue. We have here a decree from the Department of Health. You have to go into isolation or quarantine.”You couldn’t negotiate your way out. And what I mean by that is there were no provisions in the regulation that you could say well, wait a minute, I don’t have tuberculosis, or I don’t have monkeypox, or I don’t have COVID-19. I’ll take a test. I’ll prove it. No. There was nothing in the regulation that would allow you to try to negotiate your way out of this.

Mr. Jekielek:
To challenge this.

Ms. Cox:
Exactly. And in fact, when we were having oral arguments in front of the judge, the judge asked the attorney general’s office, “Of you take a family and you’ve put them into isolation in a facility or a hospital, let’s say, how do they get out?” And there was a pregnant pause, and then the attorney general’s office said, “Well, I guess they could hire a lawyer and they could sue.”

Mr. Jekielek:
That is an absolutely astounding thing that you just told me. This is telling me that this wasn’t focused on the people somehow; it was focused on the regulation or the needs of the government or the whim of the government, but not on where I would imagine things should be focused on the wellbeing of the person in question.

Ms. Cox:
Absolutely. Whether it’s the state constitution in New York or the federal Constitution, the Constitution says you have to have due process protections built into your laws and your regulations. And in this instance, there were no due process protections. I mean, in the regulation they said, “Oh, in accordance with due process, we can do the following.” But there were no actual due process steps or procedures put into that regulation. So in the judge’s decision, he actually said, “This regulation gives lip service to due process. You mentioned it, but you don’t actually have any due process built in there.” So, it was really obvious that this regulation was extremely one-sided; it just gave this unbelievable unfettered power to the government. And they gave it to themselves, the Department of Health, and the governor.

This didn’t come from the legislature. In fact, as I explained, we saw for seven years, a very similar bill failed, for seven years. Not one New York state legislator would get behind it, even the Democrats. So, it’s the story of a tyrannical governor and her Department of Health doing something that they want to do, but the people don’t want them to do it. And the people’s representatives in the New York State Senate and the Assembly don’t want them to do it, but they did it anyway.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s go to this. You were a very successful, from what I have seen, a real estate lawyer in the New York area. Again, this is something that isn’t necessarily your wheelhouse as fighting quarantine camp legislation or regulation.

Ms. Cox:
No. So, I’ve been practicing law for 25 years here in New York, and my wheelhouse was real estate. I did, yes, transactional real estate work, but I also did property tax assurari which is representing property owners and going up against local government. So towns, cities, villages. And I would sue the local government on behalf of my clients if I thought that their property valuations were too high and therefore their property taxes were too high.

And so I was used to suing the government, but on the local level for private individuals. And so this was the first time I was suing the governor and the Department of Health over an illegal, unconstitutional regulation on behalf of 19 million New Yorkers. So, I knew I had to get some New York State legislators to be the plaintiffs on this case because the governor was not and the Department of Health were not actually pulling people out of their homes and locking them in facilities yet, so.

Mr. Jekielek:
This is actually very important that this regulation was never actually used until it was struck down. So, I want to touch on that a little bit, but I want to dig into this a little further. You had a successful legal business doing good work, by all accounts. What was the moment that you learned of this or what was what went through your mind? I mean, you obviously, let’s say you had to reschool yourself somewhat to take this on, I would imagine. This wasn’t a casual decision. Tell me about this.

Ms. Cox:
So, I basically had to make a choice. In March of 2020, when Governor Cuomo had said, “Okay, everybody, we’re going to lock down, everybody’s stay in your home, close your businesses, close the schools, just two weeks to flatten the curve,” the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I said, “Oh, no, no, no, the government doesn’t do anything for two weeks.” Remember, I’ve been suing the government for 20-something years. I know that they don’t work that fast. So I knew it wasn’t going to be just two weeks. But I also said to myself, “This is completely unconstitutional. He can’t do this. He can’t force people to shut their businesses and stay home.” So, I started to speak out almost immediately and people were really upset because as you know, those lockdowns did not last two weeks.

Here in New York State, I mean, those lockdowns lasted months and people were getting decimated, especially the small business owners had worked their whole lives to build up their livelihoods and their businesses. And they were losing them because the governor was telling them they couldn’t go to work, they couldn’t open their doors. People were losing their homes because they couldn’t pay their rent or they couldn’t pay their mortgages. And the landlords were getting just totally quashed because all of a sudden, the CDC, who by the way doesn’t have the power to do this, told landlords that they couldn’t evict tenants for nonpayment of rent because it somehow spread COVID. So now you have the landlords calling me. I mean, I was in real estate. So, they’re calling me, “Do we have to do this? Do we have to follow this? How do I pay my bills? I still have to pay my property taxes. I still have to pay my mortgage, but nobody’s paying me rent anymore.”

So, we were seeing small businesses, landlords, people were just getting decimated by the government. So, all of this pain and suffering was going on, people were reaching out to me for help, asking for advice. And I mean, the virus was dangerous and hurting people, but most of what I was hearing and people reaching out to me for help was what the government was doing to them. And I said, “I can’t stand by and watch this anymore.” So, I actually started making videos and posting them online so people could get information about what’s legal, what’s not.

I had started a YouTube channel to help people understand what their rights are. And the Constitution, YouTube tore that down, they didn’t like what I was saying, so. But then I switched over to Rumble. So now I have a Rumble channel. And I started giving speeches. People were just saying, “Can you come talk to our group and explain this and what can we do, what can’t we do, what’s legal, what’s not?” So, I started giving speeches and just kind of crisscrossing New York state and helping educate people. And so, then a citizens group formed Uniting New York State, and one of the members there is who brought this regulation to my attention. And I said, “This is unbelievable.” They said, “I can’t believe it, is this real?” And I read this isolation and quarantine procedures regulation, I said, “Oof, unfortunately, it’s real, but there’s no way it’s legal.”

And I had to make a choice because I’m a solo practitioner. I used to work in a large New York City law firm when I was first out of law school, but I had left there 20 years ago and started my own law office. So, I knew I had to choose between continuing my practice or taking on this case because I couldn’t handle both. And so I put my practice to the side and for the past several months, I’ve been working on this case and I’m really glad that I made that choice, especially because I’m doing the case pro bono. So, it was a really big decision to take on. But I’m glad that I did because it was the right thing to do and ultimately, the judge ruled in our favor. So, it is wholly unconstitutional and has no place in not just New York, but in the United States of America, forced isolation and quarantine procedures with no due process? No, not in our country.

Mr. Jekielek:
So just out of curiosity, what are your politics?

Ms. Cox:
So, I’m representing a group of New York state legislators in this lawsuit. Senator George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague, Assemblyman Mike Lawler, together with Uniting New York State the Citizens Group. And all of them are Republicans. And there’s another group of legislators in New York State legislature who wrote an amicus brief to support the case. That’s Assemblyman Andy Goodell. He’s an attorney. He’s the one that authored the brief. Assemblyman Joseph Julio. And then Assemblyman Will Barkley also signed onto the amicus brief. And they’re all Republicans. They’re actually top-ranking Republicans in the New York State Assembly. And I’m actually a Democrat. So something that no one really knows because I don’t really talk about that publicly. So in my mind, this is not a political thing, this is a human rights issue. This is a constitutional issue and it really shouldn’t be about politics. And some media likes to spin it that way.

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, so the reason I asked you, okay, is that it’s the kind of thing that’s been spun as some sort of conservative right-wing talking point, but it really isn’t.

Ms. Cox:
Yeah, it’s not at all. And this is not a left or right thing. This is about being an American. And something people have really forgotten… And it’s not people’s fault. I think it’s because we just really don’t teach this in school anymore. We don’t really teach the Constitution and it should be required from the little kids all the way up through high school and college.

The Constitution was written to keep the government in check. The Constitution wasn’t written to keep the people in check. So, we really need to get back to that methodology. The Constitution is not perfect, but it’s brilliant, and it’s in my opinion. It’s brilliant because it was written by our founding fathers who came from tyranny. They lived through tyranny under a king in England who gave them no voice, no representation. They just felt like they were subject to his every whim, which they were. He was a king. And they broke free and they started the United States of America and they wrote this constitution with that in mind, they wrote the constitution in such a manner that if it’s followed, there wouldn’t be tyranny on these shores ever. Yet, here we are 250 years later and we’re fighting tyranny.

Mr. Jekielek:
See, I wasn’t one of these people that looked and saw these policies, these shelter-in-place policies for example, and everything that kind of came with it, these kinds of regulations that we’re just discussing right now. I didn’t think to myself, “My goodness, this is tyranny, “as I imagine a lot of people didn’t, but some people did. And when I first heard people say, “Well, this is obviously tyranny.” “Well, that feels a bit botched.” That was what I thought. Why is it tyranny?

Ms. Cox:
Because the definition of tyranny is when a leader takes power that they’re not entitled to. I’m kind of generalizing it, I’m summing it up. But that’s the essence of what tyranny is, and what we’re seeing over and over again here in New York definitely as you mentioned earlier, New York City mandates but also the governor and her Department of Health, we’re seeing they are taking power that they don’t have. The Constitution clearly gives us three branches of government and defines what those branches can and can’t do. It says executive branch, that’s the governor or on the federal level that would be the president. But you’ve got the governor and the executive branch and they’re supposed to enforce laws and their agencies beneath them are supposed to help them enforce laws. They’re not supposed to make laws. And then you have the judicial branch, which is the courts and the judges. And then you have the legislative branch, which, in New York state, that’s the Senate and the Assembly. And they’re supposed to make law.

They’re all supposed to be co-equal and they’re all supposed to work with checks and balances to keep each other in balance. But when you have, in this case with the quarantine camps, when you have the governor and the executive branch taking the power of the legislature, she’s trying to make law and enforce law. That’s tyranny. She’s taking a power that was never assigned to her. And who suffers? When there’s tyranny, it’s the people who suffer.

Mr. Jekielek:
So, what’s happened with this case? It was struck down. It was never used. Does that matter here?

Ms. Cox:
That’s a great question because a lot of the challenges we’ve seen over the last two and a half years against COVID mandates, a lot of them have been dismissed because of lack of standing. And standing is a legal term basically that says you have to have the right to bring the lawsuit. And in order to have the right to bring the lawsuit, you have to have an injury. So, you have to have suffered an actual injury. It can’t be something futuristic.

So in this case because the governor and the Department of Health were not removing people from their homes yet pursuant to this regulation and were not locking people in their homes pursuant to this regulation, I couldn’t use a regular person who had been injured by having this done to them. And I had to think, “Well, who else has injury here?” Because other attorneys I had spoken to, they were saying, “Oh you can’t, you’re going to lose. You can’t do that. Your case has no legs. You have to wait until people are being injured.” And I said, “There’s no way I’m waiting until Governor Hochul and Commissioner of Health start pulling people out of their homes, separating families, and putting them into detention centers for no reason, with no proof that they were even sick.”

So, I got a little creative and I approached a group of New York State Assembly members and senators and I said, “Hey look, you know what, your power is being taken here. The governor and the Department of Health are the executive branch. They made a law. They’re calling it a regulation, but it’s a law. And look how similar it is to this other proposed law that failed for seven years that nobody in the New York State legislature would get behind. And you have injury. And here’s the lawsuit. I already drafted it. Take a look.”

So, Senator George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague, Assemblyman Mike Lawler, they said, “Absolutely. We believe in this, we’re going to do it.” And they came on the case. And ultimately, we won. July 8th, the judge struck down the regulation. He said it’s unconstitutional. It’s a breach of separation of powers. And it also conflicted with existing New York State law. We already have law for 70 years in New York at Section 2120 of the Public Health Law that tells you how you quarantine somebody if they’re a public health threat. But that law has multiple due process protections built into it. Due process protection number one in that law is, you have to prove the person actually has the disease.

Mr. Jekielek:
You would think, right?

Ms. Cox:
You would think that should be step one. That’s the whole point of due process, it’s to keep the government from abusing their power. If you think about it, if the judge had ruled against me and he said, “Oh nope, they can do this. This is fine.” What does that mean? That means now that the executive branch of government is elevated above the others because if the executive branch is allowed to have their agencies make regs that conflict with laws that were passed by our legislature. Now you’re saying, well, the legislature doesn’t matter what they do, they can make any laws they want, but that’s okay because the executive branch is just going to overrule them with their regulations. It completely messes up separation of powers. Judge Ronald Ploetz, New York State Supreme Court up in Cattaraugus County, he made the right decision. It’s a hundred percent the right thing to do.

Mr. Jekielek:
But as you mentioned earlier, it is being appealed.

Ms. Cox:
So very interestingly, the Attorney General’s office has filed a notice of appeal in my case. They did that in the middle of July. We are now the end of October. And they have not pursued the appeal. So, they filed the papers to say, “We’re going to appeal,” but there’s been no appeal. And a lot of people are saying, “Well, it’s because there’s an election. November 8th is election day.” Does Hochul who’s running for governor against Lee Zeldin and Attorney General Latisha James, who’s running against Michael Henry, Attorney General, do they want the voters of New York to know that they want to overturn this decision and get this power to force people into quarantine or isolation for no reason? I don’t think anybody would be for this type of unbridled power to be given to essentially one person, the Department of Health, the Commissioner of Health.

Mr. Jekielek:
Is it really that it’s just these government leaders or bureaucrats that are seeking these kinds of unprecedented powers, or is there some kind of change in the consciousness of society? Because you’ve talked to a lot of people.

Ms. Cox:
Yes, I have spoken with so many people because of all of the speeches I’ve been giving and even presentations internationally because attorneys and even doctors and politicians outside the United States have reached out to me since my win to say, “How did you do it? And he help us. We’re facing the same thing here in our country.” South Africa has almost an identical regulation that they’re trying to push through. And an attorney there reached out to me and said, “Can you help me here?” And I said, “Absolutely, anything I can do.”

So, I think that there has been a shift, but I think that that shift is because people don’t understand what their rights are. I think if people understood what their rights are, they would say, “Hold on a second, you can’t do that.” The people give the government the power. And in the history of mankind, no government has ever taken power from the people and then just voluntarily given it back. The people have to demand it back. The people won’t demand it back unless they know that they have the right to that power.

And so I think there needs to be an education process in the United States so that people understand, oh, these are my rights, okay. And I’ve really seen, I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are Democrats who are saying, “I can’t believe what’s going on. Our party never used to support this.” And I just find it so interesting because I’m trying to make this not a political thing, but it seems to be a political thing. But I think that this election on November 8th is going to be extremely important in New York because we have not just the governor seat open, we have the attorney general seat, we have every single state senator seat, every single state assembly member seat, at the federal level, you’ve got the congressional seats are up for grabs and Senate. So, we have this opportunity in New York on November 8th to have our voices heard.

Mr. Jekielek:
So, you feel this is kind of a referendum of sorts on, I guess these kinds of policies?

Ms. Cox:
I think so. In the New York gubernatorial race, we just saw Lee Zeldin and Kathy Hochul face off in a debate a few days ago. I think the issues are pretty clear. New Yorkers, do you feel safe? Are you struggling to pay your bills? Are you struggling to put gas in your car and put food on your table and the winter’s coming? How’s your heating bill going to look? Those are real-life things. I know the mandates are a big issue. Do you want the government telling you what you can and can’t do? You have to stand six feet from somebody. You have to wear a mask. You have to take a COVID shot. You have to do… New Yorkers are tired, I mean, from what I’m hearing. They look at the other states around us and they say, “Oh my goodness, look at Florida. Look at the Dakotas. Look at Texas. They’re saying they have none of this.”

And so many New Yorkers have fled. Millions of New Yorkers have fled the state in the last couple of years because of this. They’re gone to freer states. But some of us have to stay and fight. We can’t all flee because if they win in New York, it’s going to spread like a cancer across the country. And then there’s no place left to hide.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’re taking a very strong position on this as we’ve heard. What about people around New York? I mean, you’re hearing all these things that you’re describing from people in the community, but it’s by no means the only position. Certainly not from what I’ve heard.

Ms. Cox:
So when I was working on this lawsuit, just in the drafting stages, I hadn’t gotten the New York State legislators to come on. I would reach out to colleagues. I reached out to many colleagues. I mean, couple dozen colleagues I reached out to and said, “Look at this regulation. You have to read this. This is horrific. Help me.” It’s better to have a few lawyers working on this, or even two lawyers working on this than just one. And nobody would step up. In fact, I was told, “Why are you doing this? You’re going to ruin your career. You’ve worked so hard to build it up. You’re not going to win. You can’t win. You can’t be the governor. This is a losing proposition.” And either they didn’t believe in my theory or they just thought it was too tough. There were no other lawsuits in the country that had struck down a quarantine camp regulation or law.

So, I had to start from scratch and I had to do it. Took a lot of time, a lot of research. And I was doing a pro bono who didn’t want to work for free, who thought it wasn’t going to be a good case. So, I had no support. And it took me a while to get the legislators on board too because I had to go one by one and reach out and explain the situation and explain my lawsuit and see if they would come on the case.

So, it was pretty difficult. And it was upsetting that there was no support coming from anywhere. And then when they decided to come on the case and we filed the case, all of a sudden now, I had this wonderful network of legislators who believed in this and supported me. And Andy Goodell, who’s the assemblyman, who wrote the amicus brief, was fabulous, really helping with reading my work and theorizing with me. And then there was an attorney in Albany, Tom Marcelle, he’s actually a town judge and a practicing attorney, currently running for New York State Supreme Court.

And one of the things that the Attorney General did was almost immediately, they removed my case from New York State Court to federal court, a stall tactic. They are Goliath and I’m David. So they have all these resources, all of our tax dollars to fight this case, so they can stall and they can burn through my resources. So they removed it to federal court and they removed it to a court that I’m not admitted in. I’m admitted in the Southern District of New York.

So, they removed it to the Western district. And I called up this colleague, Tom Marcelle, and I said, “Oh my goodness, they removed my case to federal court and it’s going to take me weeks to get admitted to this court. I’m not admitted there yet.” He said, “Don’t worry, I’m admitted in that district.” He said, “I’m going to help you.” And I said, “Well, but I’m working pro bono. I can’t pay you because I’m not charging anyone.” And he said, “Don’t worry about; it’s fine.” And so for a solid week, that’s all we did. Was day and night. We had to make a motion. We had to file it with the federal court. We had to ask for expedited review, which was granted, thank goodness. Really, we argue the motion in front of the federal judge to explain why we shouldn’t be in federal court and we should be back in the state court.

And ultimately, we won that motion and we were referred back into state court, and then the Attorney General’s office decided to oppose the amicus brief. They didn’t want the judge to read the amicus brief that was written by this group of New York State Assembly members. So, we had to do motion practice over that. Ultimately, we won that. But along the way, I started to find support. It was really encouraging at that point to see that, okay, I’m not alone. A lot of people think New York is just… “Oh, New York is a lost cause. Why do you live there? You should move.” New York isn’t a lost cause. It’s not. You just have to stand up and fight for it.

Mr. Jekielek:
So, what does the future look like for you now? I mean, I’m curious, is there a future for your real estate business, or have you shifted completely into this new constitutional law enterprise?

Ms. Cox:
Yes, I think so. I think there’s been a shift. People have been really appreciative of this work that I’m doing on this case and trying to educate the public about it because it’s being swept under the rug by mainstream media. This is the path that I need to follow. I’m passionate about this. I think that the Constitution must be upheld or we’re going to lose our republic. It will cease to exist as we know it.

Mr. Jekielek:
What is the one thing you would say to your fellow members of the legal profession?

Ms. Cox:
I wish that they would go back to critical thinking. I think we need to really question things that are going on in our society today. And when all of this was going on, it was started in March of 2020, people were saying, “Where are the lawyers? Where are all the lawyers? All of this stuff can’t possibly be legal. Where are you guys? What are you doing?” And very few of us from the beginning started to step up and speak out. I would love for more to step up and I would love for more to speak out. The regular citizens need the guidance. They don’t know the law like we do, and the Constitution needs to be preserved. So, I hope more of them will join the fight.

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, Bobby Anne Cox, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Cox:
Thank you, Jan. I really appreciate it.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining. Bobby Anne Cox and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

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