In 2019, New York’s legislature passed a law that allowed judges to consider a defendant’s documented history of surviving domestic abuse when determining what sentence to impose. If the judges found that the history played a role in the crime, they were able to reduce the sentences.

Since the law was enacted, prosecutors across the state, though, have at times requested that defendants waive that right in order to receive a plea deal and to avoid a trial.

But in an opinion on Thursday, New York’s highest court said prosecutors could not make defendants give up that right. In the 4-to-3 decision, written by Judge Jenny Rivera, the majority found that forcing a defendant to waive the right deprived them of the benefits of the 2019 law.

The practice “threatens to essentially eviscerate the statute by excluding the overwhelming majority of defendants who have suffered domestic violence,” Judge Rivera wrote.

Thursday’s decision also highlighted how an overwhelming majority of cases in the legal system end in plea agreements, rather than being decided at a trial. As of 2019, 96 percent of felonies and 99 percent of misdemeanors ended in a plea, according to state data.

The decision is one of the rare times that the state’s highest court has acknowledged a defendant’s rights cannot be set aside as part of a plea agreement, said Paris C. DeYoung, an attorney with Legal Aid who argued before the judges on behalf of the petitioner in the case.

“It’s very hard in our system to get the court to protect certain rights from waiver,” she said. “We’re excited that this sort of opens the door for folks to continue to pursue things that they are entitled to without having to deal with just another waiver on their plates.”

The case at the heart of the appeal was that of Nicole Hudson, who was charged with second-degree attempted murder and two counts of first-degree assault for running over her sister’s girlfriend with a car while fleeing her abusive ex-boyfriend. She took a plea deal and waived her right to have the abuse she had dealt with considered in her sentencing.

In a statement on Thursday, Ms. Hudson said the decision “has given me my life back.” Waiving away her ability to have the hearing before she was sentenced was “an injustice not just for me, but also for my child and for my family,” she said.

Oren Yaniv, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Ms. Hudson’s case, said the office was concerned the decision “will make it harder to resolve appropriate cases early.”

“Crime victims and surviving relatives deserve finality, clarity and a process that does not unnecessarily prolong painful experiences,” he said.

The law the decision aims to protect, the Domestic Violence Survivor’s Justice Act, was passed in 2019, when progressive Democrats had taken control of New York’s Legislature.

It allowed some defendants to have their history of domestic violence to be considered during sentencing if they showed that they were largely influenced by their abuse at the time of the crime. The judge could sentence the defendants to receive less prison time than what the law called for or alternative incarceration programs. It also gave people already in prison the opportunity to apply for resentencing.

The law came as crime in New York hit historic lows, and the Legislature overhauled parts of the state’s bail law and compelled prosecutors to hand over reams of case material to defense lawyers in a timely manner. However, as crime inched up after the pandemic, and after a public shift in sentiment on crime, lawmakers began to make changes to the policies. Both laws have been amended.

Ms. Hudson’s case began in 2019. She was at an outdoor party by her home when her abusive ex-boyfriend arrived. After an altercation broke out, during which her former boyfriend was injured, Ms. Hudson fled to her car and tried to escape. As she began driving away, she ran over her sister’s girlfriend, striking her three times and dragging her body down the street under the car. The woman was left permanently paralyzed and Ms. Hudson was charged with second-degree attempted murder and two counts of first-degree assault.

While her case was pending, Ms. Hudson, 34, asked that her history be reviewed by the court to see if she would be eligible to be sentenced under the domestic violence law. Her lawyers requested that the court sentence her to six months of incarceration and five years of probation.

Ms. Hudson’s lawyers included supporting information in her application, including a psychological report that said Ms. Hudson had experienced “repeated psychological and physical abuse” at the hands of her former boyfriend, who is also the father of her child. The first instance of physical abuse occurred when she was 20 years old and five months pregnant, the report found. His physical and verbal abuse escalated after.

While her application was pending before the court, Ms. Hudson was offered a plea deal through the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, offering her five years in prison and five years of probation. Their agreement, according to the opinion, was on the condition that she waive her right to the hearing to determine if she could get a reduced sentence.

Her lawyers objected to the provision, and the judge overseeing the trial also “expressed concern as to whether a defendant may waive,” the opinion said. However, the judge ultimately concluded that Ms. Hudson could waive her right and the court accepted her plea in 2021.

After she was sentenced, Ms. Hudson appealed, but the state’s Appellate Division found that the right could be waived. But the four judges on the state’s highest court on Thursday said that they agreed with a decision in another case that found some rights were “too valuable, both to the [defendant] and to the community, to be sacrificed in plea bargaining.”

Ms. Hudson said she was now “excited to finally have the chance to tell my story. I know that I caused great harm, and I take full accountability for that.”

“I also know that my actions came from my years of abuse,” she said.

But, in a dissent on Thursday, Judge Anthony Cannataro argued that a remedy should come from legislators and not from the judiciary.

Ms. Hudson’s case is an example of the sentencing law working, Judge Cannataro said, because she was offered the very lowest end of the ordinary sentencing range, “despite the serious and lifelong injuries that defendant inflicted.” Now, as a result of the decision, and the likelihood that prosecutors will withdraw the agreement, Ms. Hudson “may find herself subject to a far longer sentence than she agreed to,” he said.

There may still be survivors who will choose to plead guilty instead of going through the process to see if their case could be determined using the sentencing law, said Kate Mogulescu, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and part of the Surviors Justice Project.

“But what is not allowed now is for prosecutors to foreclose that,” she said. “That is an important distinction.”

For almost 40 years, a stretch of Manhattan’s West Side from Greenwich Village to Hell’s Kitchen has had a gay representative in the City Council, reflecting the district’s large L.G.B.T.Q. population and its role in history as the site of the Stonewall riots, a pivotal moment in the gay and transgender rights movement.

But a special election next Tuesday may see a straight person elevated to the Council seat for the first time in decades, after Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Lindsey Boylan, an activist who was also the first woman to accuse former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of sexual harassment.

Mr. Mamdani’s endorsement has injected questions of ideology and identity into a contest that previously attracted little attention and raised questions about how important it is to the voters in the Council’s Third District, and to the city at large, to elect an L.G.B.T.Q. person to the seat.

It has also drawn the race into a broader conflict between Mr. Mamdani and Julie Menin, the Council speaker and a more moderate Democrat. Ms. Menin has endorsed Carl Wilson, a community activist and legislative aide who is gay.

Mr. Mamdani’s endorsement came just before the start of early voting and quickly elevated Ms. Boylan, a democratic socialist, in a contest that had previously been dominated by Mr. Wilson, who had secured a wide range of endorsements and said he planned to join the Council’s progressive caucus if elected.

The mayor’s decision to wade into the race has upset some gay activists, including Allen Roskoff, 76, who successfully pushed to create what he called a “gay winnable” Council seat in 1991.

“We want to continue honoring the people before us who did give their blood, sweat and tears to acquire this seat,” said Mr. Roskoff, whose late partner, Jim Owles, was a prominent activist who ran unsuccessfully for City Council in the area in 1973.

Mr. Roskoff has endorsed Mr. Wilson, but says he would not have done so if he did not believe him to be the best candidate.

“In this district we have someone eminently qualified, and our history needs to be respected,” Mr. Roskoff said. He added: “I don’t think a straight person can say, ‘I would represent you just as well.’ No. That’s not what representation is.”

Others, including Mr. Wilson himself, have pushed back, saying the focus should be on the candidates’ proposals and experience and not their sexual orientation.

“There have been wonderful queer people elected from the district over the last 30-some years,” said Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist, who supports Ms. Boylan. “But I feel now and have always felt we should be voting for people not based on their identity, but based on who they are.”

Some have called the idea of a “gay seat” on the City Council reductive and patronizing to voters, especially in a city that now has many L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials.

“Hell’s Kitchen is an inclusive neighborhood of everybody — every race, every sexuality, every religion,” said Marisa Redanty, a community activist in that neighborhood.

Mr. Wilson and Ms. Boylan are competing to finish Erik Bottcher’s term, which lasts through December. Mr. Bottcher vacated his seat earlier this year when he was elected to the State Senate. The winner is expected to compete in the Democratic primary in June and the general election in November to serve a full term on the Council.

Two other heterosexual candidates, Leslie Boghosian Murphy and Layla Law-Gisiko, are also running but are considered long shots.

In an interview, Mr. Wilson said that while he thought it was “not a requirement” that the district be represented by an L.G.B.T.Q. person, “it’s an important perspective.”

“I am way more than just a gay candidate — way more,” said Mr. Wilson, who has deep relationships in the district and has worked as Mr. Bottcher’s chief of staff. “I’m also the candidate with the longest track record of on-the-ground service in this district and the experience to deliver from Day 1.”

Mr. Wilson and his supporters marked the first day of early voting last weekend with a “drag out the vote” event on Ninth Avenue, where local drag queens urged people to vote. Days later, he and Ms. Boylan both appeared in the West Village to commemorate the 60th anniversary of an important protest held at Julius’, a historic gay bar.

Ms. Boylan has responded to the debate over L.G.B.T.Q. representation delicately. In an interview, she said she would never “take away or diminish how anyone feels” about the prospect of replacing a gay council member with a straight one.

She has also pointed out that many issues, including affordability, affect people of all sexual orientations, especially in a district that includes some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States.

“About half of our residents are severely rent-burdened,” said Ms. Boylan. “It’s a real challenge to stay here.”

Ms. Nixon echoed that point, saying the Third District used to be “a much scrappier part of the city.”

“And a lot of those queer people have been priced out,” she added.

The mayor’s endorsement of Ms. Boylan came at a time when he needs allies on the Council. Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Menin have been engaged in a feud over a range of issues, including taxation and the budget.

When he endorsed Ms. Boylan, Mr. Mamdani praised her as a leader who shared his vision of New York’s future, and noted her courage in speaking out against the former governor.

“As we work to usher in a new era in our city’s politics and advance our affordability agenda,” Mr. Mamdani said, “I need partners in the work like Lindsey.”

A spokesman for the mayor, responding to controversy over the endorsement, said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Mamdani’s “commitment to the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community is clear, as is his record on the issue: establishing the first Mayor’s Office of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ Affairs, naming director Taylor Brown as the first and highest-ranking transgender leader in the history of the city’s government and supporting numerous queer candidates over the years.”

Ms. Menin is very invested in the outcome of the race and has begun soliciting funds for Mr. Wilson’s campaign, according to someone familiar with the outreach.

Before Mr. Mamdani made his endorsement, Mr. Wilson had secured the backing of influential local political clubs and labor unions, as well as elected officials including Representative Jerrold Nadler, whose district overlaps with the Council district, and the city comptroller, Mark Levine.

He has also received the backing of outside groups headed by influential Democrats, including Greg Goldner, the campaign manager for Mr. Cuomo’s mayoral bid.

Representative Nydia Velázquez, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens and has been in her own conflict with Mr. Mamdani over who should succeed her when she retires at the end of her term, has backed Mr. Wilson.

A former actor who lives in a walk-up rental on 10th Avenue, Mr. Wilson helped start a political club in the district, the Hell’s Kitchen Democrats, and served on the local community board before going to work for Mr. Bottcher.

Ms. Boylan rose to prominence as the first of a number of women to accuse Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment, allegations he has denied but that nevertheless led to his resignation in 2021.

Since then, she has run unsuccessfully for Congress in 2020 and Manhattan borough president in 2021. She campaigned for Mr. Mamdani last year and joined the Democratic Socialists of America after he won the Democratic mayoral primary.

Mr. Mamdani defeated Mr. Cuomo in both that race and the general election last November. The mayor’s decision to endorse Ms. Boylan is widely seen as suggesting some lingering animosity toward Mr. Cuomo.

The debate over the district has highlighted the vast changes in New York and across the country since the election in 1991, when the place of L.G.B.T.Q. people in society was different.

Outspoken homophobia was widespread, there was little public understanding that transgender people existed, and the AIDS crisis was at its peak, with more than 30,000 New Yorkers dying of the disease in 1991 alone.

Today, there are many elected L.G.B.T.Q. officials in New York, including Representative Ritchie Torres, who represents parts of the Bronx in Congress, and Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the Manhattan borough president.

The City Council has several L.G.B.T.Q. members, including one gay Republican and gay Democrats from districts once seen as unwinnable for gay candidates.

Chi Ossé, 28, the co-chairman of the Council’s L.G.B.T.Q. caucus and ally of Mr. Mamdani’s, said he thought the debate over gay and transgender representation extended far beyond the Third District now.

For example, he said, he did not think a gay candidate could have won in his Brooklyn district 40 years ago.

“Decades ago, this was one of the only seats, if not the only seat, where a gay candidate could run and win,” he said. “But that has certainly changed.”

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, the rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, an L.G.B.T.Q. synagogue in Chelsea, has worked closely with each of the district’s council members since the early 1990s.

She said it was “really thrilling” when Tom Duane became the first gay candidate elected to represent the area in 1991. A vocal supporter of both Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Menin, she has endorsed Mr. Wilson.

“I think now it is less important whether or not Carl is gay than the values and perspectives he has,” Rabbi Kleinbaum said. “I think it’s great that he’s gay. I think we need to have that as part of the mix, but it’s not the only issue.”

Sally Goldenberg contributed reporting.

LaGuardia Airport’s failure to put communication transponders on emergency vehicles played a role in a fatal runway collision between an Air Canada passenger jet and an airport fire truck, according to a preliminary report the National Transportation Safety Board issued on Thursday.

The air traffic controller who allowed the fire truck to cross the runway even as the jet was approaching for a landing on March 22 had been juggling air and ground traffic leading up to the collision, the report says. And it details how the firefighters driving that truck, the lead vehicle in a convoy responding to an issue with another plane, failed to immediately understand that instructions they heard over the control tower frequency radio to “stop, stop, stop” were meant for them.

But the report focuses in particular on the lack of transponders in the emergency vehicles, which investigators suggested could have allowed an automatic warning system to alert the controller that the plane and the vehicles were on a potential crash course.

Without the transponders, the “system could not uniquely identify each of the seven responding vehicles or reliably determine their positions, or tracks,” investigators wrote in the report. “As a result, the system was unable to correlate the track of the airplane with the track of Truck 1” — the truck that was struck by the plane. Thus, the report added, the system “did not predict a potential conflict with the landing airplane.”

The Federal Aviation Administration recommended last year that airports outfit their emergency vehicles with such technology to avoid close calls. On Thursday, before the report was released, Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told reporters that the agency would wait to see the report before making any changes. The Port Authority operates the three major airports in the New York area, including LaGuardia.

The 15-page report offers the most comprehensive presentation the N.T.S.B. has issued detailing the factors that led to the March 22 collision, but it is still preliminary, and the board has yet to reach a conclusion about what caused the accident. Similar investigations usually take about a year.

Still, the report did answer some key questions about the first deadly accident at LaGuardia in more than three decades. That included what role air traffic controllers played that night and what the people in the fire truck heard before the collision. The accident killed both pilots of Air Canada Flight 8646 and sent 39 passengers, as well as the two firefighters in the truck, to hospitals.

The report details how the convoy of emergency vehicles, which was responding to a separate incident involving a United Airlines plane, made multiple attempts to contact the air traffic control tower to seek permission to cross the runway. The attempts began more than 90 seconds before the collision.

Truck 1 had not been the intended lead vehicle in the convoy. Originally, a tool truck that went by the call sign Truck 7 was in front. But Truck 7’s first attempt to reach the tower was blocked by other radio communications. After a second attempt, its drivers switched places with Truck 1, which took over the lead position and, with it, responsibility for making contact with air traffic control.

In the tower, two controllers were on duty, as is standard for the overnight shift at LaGuardia. But according to the report, in the minutes leading up to the collision, only one controller was managing both the airplanes and the ground vehicles. The second controller had been helping the United Airlines plane find its way back to a gate.

About 20 seconds before the collision, according to the report, Truck 1 got permission from air traffic control to cross Runway 4, along with the rest of the convoy. At that moment, the Air Canada jet was in the final seconds of its descent toward the runway and only 130 feet above the ground, according to the N.T.S.B.’s report.

Seconds after that, the controller began urgently calling on the fire truck to “Stop, Truck 1, stop!” But the truck did not stop. According to the report, it accelerated.

Farther back in the convoy, the driver of Truck 7 — the tool truck that was originally intended to be the lead vehicle — heard the controller’s command. Seconds later, she saw the oncoming plane and called “stop, stop, stop” to the drivers of Truck 1, according to the report. There are no recordings of the communications between the emergency vehicles, investigators said.

The fire truck’s turret operator recalled hearing an order to “stop, stop, stop” on the tower frequency, but did not initially realize that it was intended for his vehicle, according to interviews conducted by investigators. It clicked when he heard “Truck 1, stop stop stop,” but at that point, the vehicle had already entered the runway.

The report said that in the moments before the crash, the fire truck turned left — away from the oncoming plane. But it was not enough to avoid impact.