WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The European Union's highest court on Tuesday ordered Poland to recognize same-sex marriages registered in other EU countries even if Polish law does not permit them.
EU countries have the obligation to recognize a marriage between two EU citizens of the same sex lawfully concluded in another EU state, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled.
The ruling addressed the case of a Polish couple who married in Berlin in 2018 and later wanted to move back to Poland. Polish authorities refused to transcribe and recognize the couple's German marriage certificate.
LGBTQ+ individuals for decades have been fighting for equal rights in Poland, where same-sex marriage and civil partnerships are illegal.
The EU court said the ruling does not mean Poland is obliged to legalize same-sex marriage. But it said the failure to recognize the marriage certificate was in breach of the “freedom to move and reside” as well as the “fundamental right to respect for private and family life."
Hubert Sobecki with the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Love Does Not Exclude said the Polish government will have to implement the ruling because it comes from the EU's highest court, meaning the EU executive can impose fines or otherwise exercise political pressure on Warsaw if it does not.
The Polish government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk faces resistance from conservative members of the governing alliance and the president over legalizing civil partnerships.
“This is an important step on the way to marriage equality,” Katarzyna Kotula, secretary of state at Tusk’s chancellery, said on social media in response to the ruling.
In October, the government presented a proposal that would give same-sex couples the possibility to sign an agreement at the notary giving them certain rights, such as access to medical records or joint tax statements.
It is unclear if conservative new President Karol Nawrocki will accept the proposal. The president can veto proposed legislation.
FILE - People take part in the Gay Pride parade in Warsaw, Poland, June 9, 2018. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file)
NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.
The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.
As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.
Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.
“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."
To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.
“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”
Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.
The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.
“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”
For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.
Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.
During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.
Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.
“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”
A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.
Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.
A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.
“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.
Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.
Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”
Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.
Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.
“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.
When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.
In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.
Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.
Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."
In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.
“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.
State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.
Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.
“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”
He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.
Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.
Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."
The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.
“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”
FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
