WBAI Returns To NYC Airwaves As Court Battle Continues

NEW YORK — WBAI was back on New York City's airwaves Thursday morning after the beloved community radio station scored a key victory in an ongoing court battle with its owner.

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge ordered the station's local programming to be restored about a month after the Pacifica Foundation abruptly shut it down, locked its doors and tried to lay off its staff, citing financial troubles.

Judge Melissa Crane's Wednesday ruling bars Pacifica from interfering with WBAI's broadcasts and operations, seizing its property or terminating its employees while a lawsuit over the station's closure proceeds.

"This is a great win for the people of New York City and local control of our institutions," Mimi Rosenberg, a longtime WBAI host and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement.

A different state judge issued a similar order last month, but an appellate court only upheld part of it before the case moved into a federal court and then back to state court.

Pacifica plans to appeal the latest court order, foundation lawyer Kara M. Steger said. The foundation will comply with the ruling in the meantime despite ongoing concerns about WBAI's financial stability, said Sabrina Jacobs, the chair of Pacifica's national board of directors.

"(T)he Foundation wishes to point out that neither the judge nor a faction of the Pacifica National Board of Directors has offered a solution to the financial crisis that necessitated the layoffs in New York," Jacobs said in a statement.

The court order was the latest episode in a bitter fight over WBAI's future that has seen the station's supporters and Pacifica's leadership accuse each other of going rogue.

John Vernile, Pacifica's interim executive director, had WBAI's offices locked and told its staffers they were being fired on Oct. 7 as national programming was fed to the station's local signal, according to WBAI backers.

Pacifica has said the station's massive financial troubles necessitated that drastic step. WBAI had lost more than $8 million in recent years and become a drain on Pacifica's other stations, the foundation has said in court filings.

Pacifica's board of directors voted Oct. 12 to ratify Vernile's actions. But Crane found that vote invalid because some members were wrongly barred from voting over nonexistent conflicts of interest, WBAI's supporters say. The judge also reportedly upheld an Oct. 20 board vote to rescind Vernile's actions.

WBAI's backers have cast the station's closure as a hostile takeover meant to tear down a platform that has served politically radical voices for decades.

But Vernile said last week that WBAI's debts had put its parent foundation "at immediate risk of financial survival." Before this week's court ruling, he had pledged to rebuild the station with the same kind of "fearless" programming.

"Pacifica needs to be on a sure path to economic recovery," Vernile said in an Oct. 31 statement. "This is just the beginning of a concerted effort to get our house in order."