New York City's ethnic grocers are fighting Mayor Zohran Mamdani in court, arguing his push to put a municipally run supermarket in every borough threatens a corner-store trade passed down since the 1960s, from the earliest Puerto Rican bodegueros to the Dominican, Central American and Mexican shopkeepers who run most of the city's bodegas today.
The Multicultural Business Coalition, an alliance of roughly 50 ethnic chambers of commerce, filed two separate lawsuits Monday, Aug. 24, in New York State Supreme Court, seeking to block the mayor's five-borough municipal grocery rollout. The first suit brings class-action civil-rights claims on behalf of smaller, minority-owned grocers who argue they cannot compete against government-subsidized pricing. The second, patterned on earlier legal fights against big-box retailers such as Walmart entering the city, contends the municipal stores exceed what city law allows and that officials skipped the environmental and community review a project this size normally requires, and it asks a judge to pause construction until that review happens.
