Bronx housing court judge Karen May Bacdayan has made a splash with an attention-grabbing ruling (in West 49th St. LLC v. O’Neill) that purports to extend noneviction protections to those in a polyamorous relationship.
Bacdayan’s ruling is very odd in two respects. First, it would appear that it is utterly irrelevant under the city code governing eviction whether someone seeking protection against eviction is or is not in a polyamorous relationship. The code factors aim, as Bacdayan explains, to assess “whether a person has sufficient emotional and financial commitment to the former tenant of record to qualify for non-eviction protections.” Nothing in the provisions that Bacdayan quotes indicates that only one person might qualify for protection against eviction. What’s more, the code specifically states: “In no event would evidence of a sexual relationship between such persons [the former tenant of record and the person seeking not to be evicted] be required or considered.” So the many paragraphs that Bacdayan expends making her case for polyamory strike me as a self-indulgent frolic and detour.
Second, it is very strange for Bacdayan to describe the relationship among the three men at issue as a polyamorous “triad.” The parties in the case, the landlord and Markyus O’Neill, contest whether O’Neill was “nothing more than a roommate” to the deceased tenant of record, Scott Anderson. Robert Romano had a long relationship with Anderson but did not live with him and is not staking any right to succeed to his lease. Both O’Neill and Romano attest that Romano did not like O’Neill, and there is no evidence that the two were ever friendly with each other. Yet Bacdayan asserts that Anderson, O’Neill, and Romano all “had a relationship to one another” because “[t]here was knowledge of all persons about the others and, at least, passive consent, even if they did not all like each other.” In other words, Bacdayan appears to concoct polyamory from two separate relationships that Anderson had.
But, hey, let’s not let the facts or the law get in the way of being a judicial pioneer on the untamed frontier of polyamory.