A Staten Island judge on Tuesday ordered New York City to send fresh notices to homeowners identified as potentially owing the city’s new pied-à-terre tax, effectively requiring the administration to restart its implementation of the surcharge on expensive secondary residences.

State Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi’s decision followed a lawsuit brought by a group of homeowners. The ruling comes just one week before an Oct. 6 deadline for property owners who were notified that they owed the tax to demonstrate that their homes should not be subject to the new levy, one of the signature initiatives of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration.

City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ozzi criticized the way the city’s Department of Finance had proceeded with the initial tax rollout. In his ruling, he said the department’s actions had created “confusion and dismay” and appeared to have been driven by an effort to quickly address budget shortfalls while placing an unfair burden on homeowners to establish that their properties were their primary residences.

Among the issues cited by the judge was the Department of Finance’s publication of a supplemental property roll containing more than 900,000 properties that the city said could potentially fall under the new tax. The city subsequently mailed notices to approximately 17,000 homeowners telling them that they owed the levy.

“No crime is involved here, but homeowners are being substantially harmed and penalized needlessly,” Ozzi wrote.

The judge directed the finance department to take several steps to restart the process. Those include removing the supplemental property roll from the city’s website, canceling the 17,000 notices already sent and relying on the latest available tax records and other information to identify taxpayers who actually owe the levy. The city must then prepare and send new individualized notices.

The tax is projected to bring in roughly $500 million each year for New York City, the largest city in the United States.

The measure has also drawn criticism from President Donald Trump. Last month, Trump described it as a “dangerous political experiment” and said he was exploring possible legal avenues through which the federal government could seek to overturn the tax.

Legal challenges are continuing on another front. On Monday, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and casino executive Steve Wynn, both of whom own New York City property, filed a lawsuit in a Long Island court challenging the pied-à-terre tax. They argue that imposing the tax on secondary residences unlawfully discriminates against people who do not live in New York City.

The latest ruling means the city will have to revisit its initial identification and notification process before moving ahead with collection of the new tax.