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We Must Fight On: The 2025 Civil Rights Agenda

The re-election of Donald Trump is an unprecedented threat to our rights and freedoms, and to our New York values.

NYCLU 2025 Legislative Agenda

With fewer guardrails and more experience under his belt, Trump is emboldened and has promised to ban abortion, mass-deport immigrants, separate families, criminalize protest, abolish public education, undermine our right to vote, target trans people and more. More than ever, New Yorkers are counting on state leaders to hold the line here, defend our freedoms – and fight on.

Trump’s improved election performance in New York in 2024 must not be misunderstood as widespread support for his agenda. New Yorkers do not want what Trump has in store. A million more New York voters rejected Trump than voted for him, meaning millions more are looking for our state to defend our freedoms and fight his cruelty. Research shows that swing voters prefer pathways to citizenship over deportation, community supports over more policing and punishment, and more protections for LGBTQ people. And the best performing item on the ballot in New York was Prop 1, meaning even Trump voters approved expanding our state constitutional protections – and did so in the face of millions of dollars of attack ads on immigration and trans rights.

Our legislative agenda includes actions that Albany should take immediately to shore up our defenses against Trump as he assumes office. It also suggests steps to help fix problems that have frayed our social fabric and galvanized millions of voters to vote for change to the status quo, from improving our mental health care system, to expanding child care, and protecting workers.
This is not a time to speak softer and do less. New Yorkers want champions for our freedoms and bold solutions that recognize the scale of the problems New Yorkers face every day. The NYCLU’s legislative agenda offers a formula to address voters’ anger and apathy and to show that lawmakers understand our challenges and this moment.

We must fight on.

Create a Stronger and More Inclusive Democracy

The right to vote, a fair democratic process, government transparency, and easy access to accurate information are cornerstones of a functioning democracy.

Barriers and restrictions on democratic participation have diluted the voices of many New Yorkers, especially people of color. For decades, New York lagged behind the majority of U.S. states, failing to improve an outdated a system of voting rules and regulations. While we have seen significant progress in recent years, there are still many reforms that our state can, and must, adopt in order to strengthen and preserve our democratic system.

Abolish Felony and De Facto Disenfranchisement

Many individuals who come into contact with the criminal legal system are denied access to the ballot. Not only does state law deny people who are incarcerated for a felony conviction the right to vote, but qualified voters detained pretrial or on a misdemeanor conviction are also often de facto disenfranchised because they are unable to access a ballot. Disparities in policing and sentencing decisions means that people of color are disproportionately denied access to the ballot. Further, those with less money who are unable to post bail are also more likely to be disenfranchised.

New York must amend its laws to ensure that individuals who come into contact with the criminal legal system are able to exercise their right to vote. First, the state must amend its constitution to abolish felony disenfranchisement, which bars people in prisons from voting. Felony disenfranchisement is a practice that, in many cases, originated from a desire to suppress the Black vote. To this end, it is perhaps unsurprising that the two states with the highest white populations in the country—Maine and Vermont—do not have felony disenfranchisement laws and allow people in prison to vote. Second, the state must adopt laws to make it easier for people detained in jail—whether pretrial or for a misdemeanor conviction—to cast a ballot.

Allow for Election Day Voter Registration

Voter registration was, in part, established to prevent Black and working-class people from voting in the late 19th century, and it continues to act as a barrier to the ballot box today—disproportionately denying Black and Brown qualified voters from casting a ballot. Today, 22 states and the District of Columbia allow qualified voters to both register and vote either throughout the entire early voting period and/or on Election Day through a process known as same-day registration (SDR), and one state (North Dakota) does not require voter registration. States and territories have been able to effectively implement SDR and, in New York, a recent change in election law actually established a single day of SDR—on the first day of early voting. Jurisdictions that have created opportunities for qualified voters to both register and vote on the same day—throughout the entire early voting period or on Election Day—consistently are among those with the highest rates of political participation.

Currently, the New York State Constitution requires that voters be registered at least 10 days prior to an election. A constitutional amendment to remove this restriction would allow New York to improve voter participation and provide SDR, including on Election Day.

Join a Multi-State Voter List Maintenance Organization

States are required to conduct what is known as voter list maintenance—a practice that updates voter rolls to establish the most accurate list of voters as possible. One mechanism that states use to identify voters who have changed their residence is joining multi-state voter list maintenance organizations, with the Electronic Registration Information Center (“ERIC”) being the largest interstate data-sharing program. Legislation to require New York to join one of these programs before August 2025 is pending before the State Legislature and would aid New York in maintaining accurate voter lists, thus appropriately allocating election resources.

Protect Checks and Balances

A healthy democracy requires a robust system of checks and balances to maintain the separation of powers and to provide effective oversight and accountability. That is no less true at the state and local level than it is for the federal government. However, New York law currently gives an unfair upper hand to mayors to control how—and, indeed, whether—New Yorkers get to vote on proposed changes to their most important governing documents: their municipal charters.

A city charter is essentially a local version of a constitution: it lays out the structure of city government, the powers of various offices, and provides the rulebook for local democracy. Amendments to city charters should be approached with the care and deliberation they deserve, but, as New York City residents recently witnessed, they can also be weaponized by mayors looking to preserve and expand their own power. State law currently provides a few pathways for amending city charters via referenda, including through voter petitions, legislation first passed by a city council, or charter revision commissions, which are temporary bodies set up to study and propose amendments. But these pathways do not have equal access to the ballot, and a mayor—acting in bad faith to block a referendum on a proposal they don’t like—currently has the ability to convene a charter commission for the sole purpose of displacing a petition – or council-driven measures – from being voted on. That’s because when a mayoral commission proposes ballot questions, state law gives those questions primacy and kicks other questions entirely off the ballot. That’s exactly what happened in 2024, when the mayor of New York City created a commission to block a City Council proposal from being voted on and then went on to use his hand-picked commissioners to rush through the crafting of ballot proposals to expand his own power and weaken the powers of the Council.

The documents that provide the framework for local democracy in our communities are too important to be weaponized for political purposes. Lawmakers must act on legislation to remove a mayor’s ability to preempt ballot questions via charter revision commissions. This legislation should also establish baseline standards for any such commission to ensure that they take the time needed to thoughtfully review and consider any proposals for charter amendments.

End Jury Disenfranchisement

New York law permanently disqualifies people convicted of felonies from serving on a jury, no matter the type of offense, how long ago the conviction, or where the conviction occurred—making New York’s law more punitive than the majority of states, including states like Florida and Louisiana.

Jury disenfranchisement serves no legitimate purpose and has acute racial impacts in New York. Racial disparities in policing, prosecution, and sentencing mean that New York’s jury disenfranchisement law shuts thousands of Black residents out of civic engagement and strips people of their right to be judged by a jury of their peers.

Jury service is a cornerstone of our system of self-government and, with voting, represents Americans’ most significant opportunity to participate in the democratic process. In 2021, New York passed legislation to restore the right to vote for people with felony convictions automatically upon release from prison. In doing so, the State recognized that the voting process is an essential component of rehabilitation and reintegration. The same is true of jury service. For many people convicted of felonies, civic engagement—including through political participation such as voting and jury service—is a critical means to facilitate sustainable reintegration back into society. Lawmakers must act to immediately restore the right to serve on a jury for people with felony convictions upon release from prison.

Reform and Strengthen New York’s Freedom of Information Laws

New York’s open government laws are outdated, and compliance often varies from agency to agency. Compliance among law enforcement agencies is often abysmal, as is compliance in rural areas where smaller towns often lack the resources to produce records in a timely fashion. The legislature must act on a slate of bills to help solve these problems by: reducing wait times for both agency compliance and appeals of FOIL denials; requiring agencies to report FOIL compliance data to the state, so that agencies with a history of noncompliance can be identified and corrected; tightening the commercial FOIL exemption, which allows corporations doing business with the state to maintain certain trade secrets; and strengthening the FOIL’s attorney fee recovery provisions, to make FOIL actions more affordable to the public and more attractive to practitioners.

Ensure Universal High-Speed Internet

Universal and reliable access to the internet is essential to nearly every New Yorker’s ability to live in the modern world and participate in our democracy. Many people rely on the internet to work, attend school, go to the doctor, seek entertainment, and communicate with loved ones. Unfortunately, New Yorkers do not all have the high-speed internet that would allow us to participate in these necessary elements of our lives. This is a statewide problem; large swaths of rural New York lack the infrastructure to provide affordable broadband to residents—and in New York City, more than 24 percent of New Yorkers do not have a broadband subscription.

Predictably, the digital divide disproportionately affects people who live at the intersection of poverty and structural racism. Forty-five percent of New York City households living below the poverty line do not have broadband internet access. And about 35 percent of Latinx and Black New Yorkers lack broadband internet access. This means that as more of our brick-and-mortar life shifts online, ensuring universal online access is a core racial justice issue. Too many families lack adequate internet access or the devices they need to connect.

The Legislature must work to ensure that all New York households have equitable, affordable access to this critical utility. Access to broadband internet should be a universal right, not a privilege for the few.

Secure Justice for Young People

New York should divest from a punitive education system and invest in the health and wellbeing of all kids. Our public education system too often rewards the privileged, while disregarding and disparaging Black and Brown students and those with greater needs. But education is a right for all New York’s young people, not a privilege.

Promote Solutions Not Suspensions

New York must pass the Judge Judith S. Kaye Solutions Not Suspensions Act to support schools in creating positive, inclusive classrooms. In New York, students lose hundreds of thousands of days of learning each year because of suspensions, often for normal youthful behavior. Students suspended are disproportionately Black and Latinx and those with disabilities. Across New York State, Black children are two to five times more likely to be suspended than their white classmates. Students who are suspended have higher likelihoods of involvement with the criminal legal system than their peers.

Suspensions limit academic achievement by using education as a reward for good behavior. Students in New York can be suspended for an entire school year, and they are not entitled to continue their regular lessons, homework, or courses during that time. New York is an outlier in allowing students to be removed from school for such long periods.

Instead of suspensions, schools should use positive discipline techniques like conflict resolution, restorative practices, and social-emotional skill building. The Judge Judith S. Kaye Solutions Not Suspensions Act will:

  • Make suspensions a last resort, not a first response to disciplinary infractions by using practices such as peer-to-peer mediation, counseling, and parent conferences.
  • End maximum-length suspension of 180 days (an entire school year) unless otherwise required by federal law.
  • Limit the use of suspensions for students in pre-kindergarten through 3rd grade to only the most destructive behavior.
  • Mandate that all suspended students receive adequate out-of-school instruction and the opportunity to complete missed credits.
  • Require charter schools to follow state education policies regarding discipline.
Ensure Access to Health Care for Young People

It is imperative that all young people have access to health care when they need it. Timely treatment and preventative care are critical for young people’s health and wellbeing. This care allows them to excel in school and beyond. Most young people involve parents in their health care decisions, and indeed, parent and family support is a primary predictor of a young person’s wellbeing. But not all young people have healthy, safe family relationships. In many cases, and in particular for sensitive care, young people will not seek care if they are required to involve a parent, or if their confidentiality is compromised.

Because New York recognizes the necessity of timely access to health care, the state already permits all young people to consent to certain types of confidential health care and allows certain categories of young people to consent to all types of health care. However, this patchwork of laws leaves some young people without a path to receive needed care.

New York must fill these gaps and support young people in unsafe family relationships by allowing young people to consent to their own care. Importantly, this would only apply to young people who are mature enough to understand the need for, nature of, and foreseeable risks and benefits involved in their care. In order to make young people’s access to health care a reality, New York must also lift the cost and confidentiality barriers that keep this care out of reach for too many.

Deliver Comprehensive Sex Ed

There is currently no requirement that New York schools provide any sexuality education.

In the public schools that do offer sex education, curricula are often inaccurate, incomplete, or biased. As a result, many students never receive a single lesson on issues like consent, intimate partner violence, sexual orientation and gender identity, sexual health, or pregnancy.

Without comprehensive sex ed, young people are at risk. Comprehensive sexual health education is a proven tool for building a culture of inclusion and consent and preventing sexual assault and violence. Comprehensive sex ed is also popular policy in New York. 89 percent of likely voters believe it is important to have sex education in middle school, and 98 percent believe it is important to have sex education in high school.

The comprehensive sex education (CSE) legislation would require that public and charter school students receive medically accurate, age-appropriate, and inclusive sex ed. Students who receive comprehensive sex ed are more likely to delay sexual initiation, and when they do become sexually active, they are more likely to engage in risk-reduction behaviors. It is the only tool we have for preventing sexual violence and sexual harassment before they occur. It also helps to create inclusive school communities by showing LGBTQ+ youth that they are not alone and showing their peers that they exist. By requiring comprehensive sex ed in public and charter schools in grades K-12, we can ensure that New York’s youth have access to information to make informed choices about their health and relationships as they move into adulthood.

Protect East Ramapo Students

The East Ramapo Central School district is the largest school district in Rockland County and it educates the highest proportion of English Language Learners of any district in the state. The district is also deeply racially segregated, woefully underfunded by local taxpayers, and constantly destabilized by mismanagement and governance disconnected from public school families. Currently, only one in three English Language Learners in East Ramapo will graduate high school. New York must pass comprehensive governance reform for East Ramapo this year to protect the education rights of the thousands of immigrant kids, improve educational outcomes, and appropriately manage taxpayer dollars, ensuring they are used to deliver educational services and not wasted or misspent.

Provide a more equitable, inclusive and transparent process for educational funding for schools on Tribal Nations in New York

The Onondaga Nation has had a treaty with the U.S. since the country’s earliest days that requires the state to provide an equal education to Indigenous students living on sovereign land. Unfortunately, the current funding structure fails to achieve that mandate. Critically, Onondaga Nation schools and the other Indigenous schools in New York do not receive funding in the same way as other New York State public schools. They have a different set of rules, barriers, and hurdles to overcome. While nearly every school in New York State is funded through their school district, the three schools on Indigenous Nations must make a direct plea to the New York State Education Department (NYSED) for their funding. Unlike every other public school, there is no funding formula that guarantees Indigenous Nations schools money for capital improvements. Often, this funding request comes with little to no Tribal Nation input. New York must direct the Division of the Budget to consult tribal nations, relevant state agencies, and other stakeholders regarding budget proposals that would impact the state’s tribal nations.

Promote Fairness in College Admissions

When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, it struck down an important mechanism for ensuring greater diversity in post-secondary schools. Affirmative action was one of our best tools for ensuring that young people of color in New York—who are more likely to be impacted by historical redlining and school segregation—had access to the opportunity and upward mobility provided by a college degree.

This decision, however, left intact meritless admissions practices that disproportionately benefit white and wealthy students, including as legacy preference, which provides preferential treatment in the admission process to applicants related to an alumnus. Eliminating college admissions mechanisms designed to address racial biases and discrimination and increase campus diversity while maintaining ones that will exacerbate racial disparities on campuses represents significant backsliding. New York can resist this backsliding by eliminating legacy preference.

The Fair College Admissions Act would prohibit legacy admissions policies at colleges and universities in New York. This legislation would declare such practices and policies inequitable and discriminatory. This means that any higher education institution in New York that is granted authority to confer degrees by the State Board of Regents would not be allowed to consider an applicant’s relations to an alumnus as a factor in admissions decisions.

Protect Immigrant New Yorkers

President Trump’s second term will be devastating for immigrant New Yorkers. Trump and his advisors have been plain about their plans to deport millions of people, an unprecedented mass deportation effort that will separate families, cripple the economy, and irreparably scar our communities. It’s a project they cannot and do not plan to carry out on their own. The incoming administration has been explicit about its desire to enlist local law enforcement to surveil, arrest, and deport people on a massive scale.

In the face of these threats, it is past time for New York to take a stand. Now is the moment for our state to proudly honor—not shy away from—its long tradition of welcoming immigrants. If we are to truly live up to our ideals, New York must take proactive measures to end complicity in the U.S. Immigration and Customs’ (ICE) deportation agenda, guarantee due process for vulnerable noncitizens, and ensure that everyone has access to critical government services regardless of their immigration status.

Create a New York for All

Immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government, not state and local authorities. Yet over the past two decades, ICE has built its deportation infrastructure on the backs of local law enforcement, relying on police and sheriffs’ departments to disclose information and unlawfully detain people for civil immigration offenses. This collusion between ICE and local government spreads fear and confusion within immigrant communities and makes New York complicit in tearing people away from their families, livelihoods, and communities.

With Trump threatening the largest mass deportations in U.S. history, New York must say loudly and clearly that it will not conspire with federal immigration enforcement. The New York for All Act would follow the lead of California, Washington State, Oregon, and many cities and counties across the country by drawing a sensible line between state and local government and immigration authorities. The bill would prohibit the use of local resources for immigration enforcement, end agreements that make local officers deputies of ICE, and protect New Yorkers’ personal information from improper disclosure.

Ensure Access to Representation

For immigrants who have been placed in removal proceedings and are facing the prospect of deportation, losing their case before an immigration judge can mean being uprooted from family and community, or even being put in deadly harm. Unlike criminal proceedings, a person’s functional right to an attorney in immigration court is dependent on their ability to pay for one. This leaves many immigrants in the unfair and dangerous position of navigating an overwhelmingly complex and high-stakes legal process on their own. Though New York has provided funding for immigrant legal services in past years, that funding is not guaranteed year to year, leaving critical access to representation subject to the whims of annual budget cycles. Stable support for immigration legal services is critical at a time when so many new Americans are choosing to make New York their home.

The Access to Representation Act would create a right to government-funded counsel for immigrants in removal proceedings who are in or have a nexus to New York—including people formerly detained in New York who have been transferred to other states—making sure that no New Yorker faces the threat of deportation without meaningful representation. The bill would guarantee the assistance of counsel not only in removal proceedings, but also other legal proceedings critical to a person’s deportation defense.

End Local Support for Immigration Detention

Among the cruelest parts of our broken immigration system is the detention of people for civil immigration violations. Across the country, immigrants who have come to the United States seeking a better life are jailed in county correctional facilities that contract with ICE to fill empty bed space. New York is no exception. These detention contracts allow ICE to maintain its massive detention capacity and allow counties to profit off of jailing immigrant New Yorkers.

The Dignity Not Detention Act would work together with other immigrants’ rights legislation to curtail the deportation pipeline. It would prohibit state and local agencies or actors from contracting with ICE to detain immigrants, and require those that already have contracts to terminate them.

Bring Justice to the Clemency Process

The power of the executive to grant clemency to people convicted of crimes can be an important tool to mitigate the harsh effects of the criminal legal system, particularly for those facing the prospect of deportation. For immigrants, even low-level convictions can significantly impede their ability to adjust their immigration status or fight deportation. The Clemency Justice Act would allow people with an urgent need for clemency, including pending removal proceedings, to apply and receive an expedited decision on a pardon or commutation. The bill would also bring fairness and transparency to the clemency process by creating guidelines for applications and requiring greater disclosure by the governor on how clemency applications are considered.

Stop Abusive Policing

New York must fundamentally transform the role of policing in our state. The Legislature has an opportunity to present a bold new vision for community safety that starts with removing police as the default solution to address mental health needs, housing and food insecurity, and school safety and discipline. That vision must include moving beyond reforms that simply reinforce the role of police officers in the daily lives of Black and Brown communities and people experiencing poverty. It must also include creating stronger mechanisms for the public to identify abusive officers and hold them to account when they engage in misconduct. New York should stop relying on police as mental health responders, end no-knock raids and pretextual stops, ensure that police disciplinary proceedings are transparent and independent, restrict police access to military equipment, and ban rogue DNA databases.

Help People in Crisis

We must end our over-reliance on police as first responders in every crisis. In March 2020, Daniel Prude was experiencing an acute mental health crisis when his family called 911 for help. He was naked in the street and posed no risk to any other person. Yet, Rochester Police responded in large numbers, handcuffed him, placed a hood over his head, and held him face down on the cold pavement until he stopped breathing. Daniel Prude was a man experiencing an obvious mental health crisis, and he deserved care and dignity—but he was denied both.

Studies show that up to half of people who become victims of police violence have a disability, and the overwhelming majority of those people have a mental health disability. Tragically, for many New Yorkers, 911 has become the only option for people looking for mental health crisis intervention. Police often arrive at the scene armed with deadly weapons, a lack of mental health training, and an inability to deescalate the personal crises they are so often assigned to handle.

We need policy change that shifts our whole vision of how our community responds to people in crisis. This starts by treating mental health and substance use as public health issues—not public safety issues for the police. Daniel’s Law would ensure that professionals who have experience with mental health, drug use, and disability set the rules for responding to a mental health crisis. These experts would run regional and state councils that develop training and rules for all calls to dispatch, and all responses to mental health emergencies. The law would ensure that responses to people in mental health crises are driven by evidence-based practices, and that trained mental health professionals—not police—are the first to respond to New Yorkers experiencing a mental health crisis. This approach is supported by the findings of the Daniel’s Law Task Force, which was established in 2023 to examine crisis response models and whose December 2024 report called for prioritizing a health-led, non-police response for people in crisis.

When our friends, neighbors, or community members are experiencing a mental health crisis, they deserve to be treated with compassion, care, and understanding—not cops and the threat of jail. With Daniel’s Law, the Legislature holds the possibility for real community safety that starts with removing police as the default solution.

End No-Knock Raids

No-knock and quick-knock warrants and raids have severe and deadly consequences for communities targeted for aggressive over-policing. It is time for these raids to end. Lawmakers must pass legislation ending no-knock raids for drug and property offenses and demilitarizing warrant executions altogether. The Legislature must also end the practice of police departments and municipal governments profiting from seizing people’s property during these searches and arrests by putting a stop to civil asset forfeiture.

End Pretext Stops

Any police encounter involves the potential for escalation and tragedy. This is even more true for people of color, who face police stops and use of force at disproportionate rates. Many of these encounters are entirely needless and do nothing to advance public safety, serving only as an excuse for otherwise unlawful searches and harassment. One example are pretext stops, where an officer pulls someone over for any number of minor traffic infractions as a pretext to engage in a criminal law investigation. The officer in these situations otherwise lacks a legal basis for stopping someone (e.g., pulling over a diver for having something hanging from their rearview mirror as a pretext for searching the car for drugs). More than just being an end-run around probable cause, these stops often serve as cover for officers to engage in racial profiling. And critically, these stops do not make New Yorkers safer. Lawmakers must put an end to the use of pretext stops in New York by passing legislation that creates a category of non-safety related infractions that cannot serve as the sole basis for stopping a vehicle. This will sharply reduce the number of unnecessary and bad-faith encounters and close off a key avenue for racial profiling in police encounters.

End Police Transparency Excuses

In June 2020, state lawmakers took a historic step to end the regime of secrecy that had kept police discipline and misconduct records hidden from the public. For over 40 years, police departments had used Civil Rights Law Section 50-a to conceal critical information on whether and how officers were held accountable for misconduct. 50-a became the go-to excuse for hiding everything from complaint histories of officers who killed New Yorkers to basic data on use-of-force incidents to footage from body-worn cameras. That came to an end in 2020 when lawmakers fully repealed section 50-a and made it clear that the public is entitled to all police discipline and misconduct records. Unfortunately, police departments across the state are continuing to resist full transparency, with many departments refusing to turn over records of misconduct allegations where the department itself did not ultimately impose discipline on the officer, claiming that records are still secret under police union contracts, and even arguing that records that were created prior to the repeal of 50-a get to remain secret in perpetuity.

The Legislature cannot let its historic repeal of 50-a be undermined by the same forces who have always resisted any measure of police transparency and accountability. New York must enact measures to ensure that the repeal of 50-a is fully implemented in practice. Lawmakers can put an end to the bad-faith excuses from police departments and police unions and guarantee that the full universe of police misconduct and disciplinary records be made public under the state’s Freedom of Information Law. And they should also pass legislation to require the creation and maintenance of a centralized, statewide database, where summary information on law enforcement misconduct and disciplinary records are published and made freely accessible. This would remove the burden of filing and fighting long and costly FOIL requests from everyday New Yorkers.

Ensure Independent Police Discipline

For too long, police departments in New York have fought for the power to hide their misconduct, avoid accountability, and act with impunity. Some state laws give police leadership near total control over all discipline and misconduct proceedings, including Chapter 834 of the Laws of 1940, which prohibits local governments from appointing impartial judges to preside over police disciplinary cases.

In New York City, independent judges preside over disciplinary trials for all public employees except for NYPD officers. When an NYPD officer is accused of misconduct, the NYPD controls the entire process. Police department employees act as judges, hearings take place in police headquarters, and police departments set their own rules. Because of Chapter 834, these proceedings cannot happen anywhere else.

We have seen repeatedly that police departments are incapable of policing themselves. New York must empower localities to independently administer police disciplinary proceedings. While much more work will still be needed, repealing Chapter 834 is a necessary step toward challenging police abuse.

End Militarized Policing

Americans have a First Amendment right to engage in peaceful mass protest. But across New York, protesters are too often met with a heavily militarized police response, including military weapons obtained through the federal government. These weapons are extremely dangerous. They include tear gas and indiscriminate pepper spray, and acoustic weapons like long-range acoustic devices (LRADs), which can cause pain and hearing damage, including the potential for permanent hearing loss. These weapons of war have no place in New York and no business being used to target and suppress protest. Lawmakers must shore up basic First Amendment guarantees by codifying affirmative protections for protesters. Lawmakers should advance measures to eliminate law enforcement access to military weapons and armored vehicles, to restrict police use of drones, and to restrict the use of chemical and acoustic weapons and crowd-control munitions.

End Rogue DNA Databases

The government’s collection of DNA implicates New Yorkers’ ownership of private and sensitive information—our own genetic code. For good reason, New York law mandates a comprehensive and exclusive set of rules governing testing and data-banking of DNA samples. This existing law balances the rights of individuals and the interests of law enforcement and contains clear provisions designed to limit abuse of our genetic material.

Yet, New York City has developed a sprawling and unregulated DNA database that flouts the state law. There are no privacy protections for individuals whose genetic information is contained in the database, and the database exists without any independent oversight. Reports suggest that the NYPD’s methods of collecting samples for this database have been secretive, racially discriminatory, and have targeted children. The city is now in unregulated possession of the genetic material of people who have never been convicted of, charged with, or even suspected of a crime. The Legislature must act to ban this rogue database, order its data destroyed, and make it clear that state law governs all genetic information held by the government.

Safeguard Digital Privacy and Personal Autonomy

New York should protect our personal information, protect workers from surveillance and the use of discriminatory algorithms, ban biometric surveillance, and update our warrant protections to be in line with technological advancements.

New and invasive technology can pose a serious risk to our civil rights and civil liberties. Companies surreptitiously harvest our personal data for profit. Facial recognition and other biometric technologies collect physically identifiable information in secret. Algorithms used by government agencies foster discrimination while promising neutrality. And law enforcement can access our private digital communications without a judge’s approval.

New Yorkers’ civil rights should extend fully to the digital world. This means ensuring algorithms do not undermine anti-discrimination laws, guaranteeing meaningful access to and control of our personal data, banning biometric surveillance technologies, requiring tailored warrants to access our online communications and data, and providing equitable and safe technology access to those in most need.

Protect Our Personal Information Online

It is no longer possible to participate in society without providing personal information to private companies and other entities that can reveal the most intimate details of our lives. And as other states move to ban abortion and gender-affirming care—and to use personal information that private companies harvest to prosecute people for seeking, providing, or helping others to obtain that care—the stakes have gotten higher. People often do not know or consent to the ways that companies collect, use, retain, share, and monetize our personal information. And when we try to exert control, we wind up mired in the inscrutable fine print of privacy policies and user agreements.

The consequences of privacy abuses can be profound. Precisely-targeted pricing, advertising, and other automated decision tools are used to exclude people of color, women, and older individuals from housing, credit, and employment opportunities in ways that would be unthinkable in the offline world. Government agencies increasingly turn to automated decision systems to determine everything from teacher evaluations and child custody to sentencing, probation, parole, and more. Computer-generated decisions have the veneer of objectivity, but these systems are built on human inputs, and they produce biased results. These technologies all too often replicate and amplify harm towards people who already face bias and discrimination.

New York needs comprehensive privacy protections that show us—and let us control—when our personal information is collected, how it is used, and where it goes. The Digital Fairness Act would do exactly that by requiring businesses to maintain our personal information securely and use it only as we intend, placing needed safeguards on the use of our most intimate biometric data, and ensuring that anti-discrimination rules apply fully to the digital world.

Empower Workers Against Workplace Surveillance and Discriminatory Algorithms

Worker surveillance and the use of artificial intelligence in hiring have been allowed to run rampant for far too long. Biased, ineffective, or unfair hiring tools are deciding who gets employed. And invasive electronic monitoring systems are used to track workers’ every move and interaction, enforce unrealistic and inhumane quotas, or penalize workers for taking breaks.

New York must pass the Bossware and Oppressive Technology (BOT) Act to empower workers against exploitative surveillance, prohibit the use of discriminatory algorithms in hiring, and make New York a leader in setting labor protections for the digital age.

Ban Biometric Surveillance

In recent years, New York has seen a rise in the use of biometric recognition technologies—like face, voice, and gait recognition—by police, in housing, in transit, and in places of public accommodation. In 2020, the Legislature recognized the threat that biometric surveillance poses to our children, and rightly placed a moratorium on its use in New York schools. It is time to extend these protections to other areas where people’s basic needs and livelihoods are at risk. Biometric surveillance presents an unprecedented threat to our privacy and civil liberties, aiming to track who we are, where we go, and who we meet. Yet, despite its invasive nature, biometric technologies are notoriously inaccurate and racially biased. Numerous studies have shown that face surveillance technologies are particularly inaccurate for women and people of color. In addition, many biometric technologies rely on the remote monitoring and collection of your personal biological characteristics without your consent or knowledge. Unlike a password or credit card number, this information cannot be changed if it is compromised or stolen.

Lawmakers must pass a ban on biometric surveillance by government agencies, in particular by law enforcement, and in other areas where our fundamental rights are at stake.

Protect Against Warrant Overreach

Warrants are a central tool for law enforcement investigations, but they need to be narrowly targeted, specific, and based on probable cause. Dragnet warrants, which are often based on overly broad factors like search engine keywords or location, do not meet this baseline standard and harm the privacy and safety of countless people who happen to meet the stated criteria. Broad warrant requests could place hundreds or thousands of unsuspecting and innocent people in the crosshairs of law enforcement, potentially violating their Fourth Amendment rights. As technology providers and data brokers capture ever-more detailed data trails, dragnet warrants must be banned.

Furthermore, New York’s warrant protections remain woefully outdated: Law enforcement has long been taking advantage of inadequate privacy laws to turn mobile phones into tracking devices and to access emails, documents, and text messages without proper judicial oversight. The Legislature must require law enforcement to obtain a search warrant before it can physically or electronically access digital information.

Allow Medical Aid in Dying

The right to make decisions about one’s own medical care is vital, particularly for those nearing the end of life. Patients diagnosed with terminal illness often endure extensive, sometimes painful treatment. When the limits of such treatment are reached, many wish to have control over when and how their death occurs. The New York State Constitution guarantees the right of every individual to make their own medical decisions, including whether to accept or refuse medical treatment, and the law must also recognize the right of terminally ill patients to end their lives on their own terms.

The Medical Aid in Dying Act would give terminally ill people the legal right to make these critical decisions in consultation with qualified physicians. Patients could be prescribed medication for the purpose of ending their lives if they have been found by two physicians to be mentally competent, making a voluntary and informed request, and suffering from a terminal illness with less than six months to live. The legislation includes multiple layers of safeguards to ensure that the decision to accelerate death is fully informed and not coerced or made as a result of any outside pressures, including economic pressures. The legislation also provides protection for specific vulnerable groups including those with disabilities.

Advance Reproductive, Gender, and Family Justice

This moment in history is an inflection point that calls on feminist and LGBTQ+ movements to show up with force. Without the protections of Roe v. Wade, the second Trump Administration poses an existential threat to abortion access nationwide. Meanwhile, Trump and his allies have vowed to eliminate access to medically necessary, gender affirming care and to erase transgender people from public life. New York must lead as a beacon for reproductive freedom and trans justice. And while abortion access is critical, it is just one piece of a whole. Caregivers and pregnant people, women and families, LGBTQ+ people, and those at the intersection of gender, race and class discrimination, need us to do more. This moment demands a comprehensive commitment to equity, autonomy, accountability, community, and caregiving. From child care to abortion access to gender-affirming care, these policies respond to the attacks our communities face and lay the groundwork for the transformation necessary to heal from the wounds inflicted by our violent history and form a society that supports inclusive, lasting gender justice.

Protect Family Rights in Child Protection Investigations

The past few years have brought new and welcome scrutiny over the role of police, particularly in Black and Brown communities. Yet in many of those same communities, child protective services can have a similarly intrusive and harmful impact, surveilling families’ personal lives and separating children from their parents. This system of family regulation—often referred to as “the new Jane Crow”—has deep roots in legacies of slavery, under which enslaved Black women were forcibly denied the right to parent their children. The echoes of this history live today in the racist stereotypes that permeate the family regulation system, informing and controlling who is and is not considered deserving of parenthood.

Families of color are disproportionately reported, investigated, and brought to court over allegations of child neglect—often for dubious reasons that have more to do with poverty than maltreatment. A knock on the door from a child protective investigator can lead to a parent’s children being taken away for months—if not years.

Despite these high stakes, parents are not entitled to a “Miranda warning” like they would receive in the criminal context. Many parents are therefore confused about their rights in such situations and are coaxed into making statements or agreements against their own interest.

The Legislature must pass legislation requiring child protective workers to give parents notice of their rights when they initially investigate families, including the right not to make statements or sign releases and to consult with an attorney. New York should also ensure that all parents have access to legal representation during a child protective investigation. Access to a lawyer has been shown to dramatically reduce the likelihood that a case will be filed in family court and it also lessens the chance that families will be separated.

Lawmakers should also pass legislation to prohibit anonymous reports to the State Central Register. Anonymous calls are often used to harass or threaten parents, and the inherent lack of accountability in anonymous reporting casts doubt on the reliability of those reports. By requiring confidential, rather than anonymous, reporting, lawmakers can help reduce unnecessary family intervention without compromising child safety.

Increase Awareness of Lead Dangers in Homes

Across the state, parents living in lead-positive units have received notice from the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) that they were under investigation for child neglect due to an alleged failure to provide adequate housing. Some tenants have also lost, or are at risk of losing, their public housing benefits as a consequence of an elevated lead-paint test in their home. In addition to these government-imposed consequences, tenants frequently face an impossible choice: their landlords refuse to make required lead-paint remediation, but they can’t afford to move to a lead-free home. This creates a pattern of unintended consequences stemming from well-meaning housing code enforcement, whereby residents are effectively being threatened with homelessness and family separation because of their landlords’ failure to comply with the law.

Municipalities must provide tenants with notice and information in the event of a positive lead test. Tenants should be told about the health impacts of elevated lead levels and the possible repercussions that a positive test could have on their rights as tenants and as parents.

Require Consent for Drug Testing Pregnant People

Pregnant people in New York State are often subjected to medically unnecessary drug and alcohol testing by their health care providers without their knowledge or consent. Newborns are also often tested without the consent of their parent. Non-consensual testing undermines trust between pregnant people and their providers and deters some pregnant people from seeking vital pre- and perinatal medical care. These tests can cause an avalanche of unwarranted and devastating consequences, including a report to Child Protective Services (CPS), family separation, loss of housing and employment, and more. Tests are usually conducted at the discretion of health care providers and are subject to their unconscious bias. Unsurprisingly, drug and alcohol testing disproportionately targets Black and Latinx pregnant people in public hospitals, despite similar rates of substance use by white patients in private facilities. Women of color already suffer from disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality and family separation by CPS. Non-consensual and medically unnecessary drug and alcohol testing exacerbates these inequities.

Pregnant people must have access to quality health care. Policy makers should recognize the harm to families caused by discriminatory drug testing in health care settings, which can lead to family separation and poor health outcomes for both children and parents. New York must pass legislation to ensure all pregnant patients give explicit, informed consent before drug testing.

Provide Universal Child Care

Universal access to high-quality child care enables parents to work and fully participate in their communities. For single parents and for women, who are often the primary caregivers of their families, the lack of accessible child care can have dire consequences for their income, job retention, and children’s educational outcomes. New York State ranks among the most expensive states for child care in the nation. The average cost of child care exceeds rent and college tuition. Child care remains out of reach for most undocumented children, and almost two-thirds of New Yorkers live in child care deserts where they are unable to find quality care in their neighborhoods. Moreover, for those who perform child care work—traditionally women of color—the work is so undervalued and underpaid that almost 60 percent of the families of people who care for young children must rely on public income-support programs.

We are grateful that recent state budgets have contained meaningful investments in child care that take steps to expand eligibility for New York’s poorest families. But more transformative investment is needed to support a sustainable child care workforce, reduce barriers to access, and put New York families on the path to truly universal child care. The COVID pandemic made clear what working families with children have long known: trusted, accessible, quality child care is critical to public health and economic stability. Lack of child care is a gender, race, economic, and educational justice issue. If our state is to provide all New Yorkers with a pathway to achieve their full potential, universal child care must be a priority.

Protect Pregnant and Parenting People in the Criminal Legal System

Every pregnant person—including those who are incarcerated or in law enforcement custody—has a right to be treated with dignity. They are also entitled to information and resources that enable them to exercise agency in their reproductive decision-making. And all new parents, including those who give birth while incarcerated, should have the opportunity to bond with their child. But these fundamental rights are denied to far too many people in the criminal legal system. Much remains to be done to protect the rights of pregnant people to physical safety, quality health care, and family integrity in New York prisons, jails, and law enforcement custody.

For years, New York has prohibited correctional personnel from using shackles or restraints on people during pregnancy, labor, and post-pregnancy. However, these protections only apply to prisons and jails. The Legislature must act to ban the use of restraints on pregnant and recently pregnant people any time they have their freedom of movement significantly restricted by law enforcement. This includes settings such as police stations, holding facilities, prosecutors’ offices, medical areas and hospitals, and anywhere people are held in detention or transported in connection with criminal or juvenile delinquency charges.

Additionally, lawmakers must improve health and safety conditions for pregnant and recently pregnant people who are incarcerated. They need access to critical resources to facilitate breastfeeding and lactation. They must be able to give birth in safe, dignified, well-supplied settings with access to a support person. Pregnant people who are incarcerated should also have access to a trained professional who can lay out their pregnancy options, including their right to an abortion. Further, when a person becomes a parent while incarcerated, they must have meaningful access to a nursery that allows them to care for and bond with their newborn.

These commonsense measures are an important step towards upholding the reproductive health, rights, and dignity of incarcerated pregnant and parenting people.

Increase Hospital Transparency

No one should be turned away from a hospital when they need health care. Yet hospitals often deny care based on the bureaucratic decision making of non-medical personnel rather than sound medical science. This leaves patients in regions of the state without access to reproductive health care, end-of-life care, gender-affirming care, and other types of sensitive health care. To make matters worse, because information about what services hospitals provide is often impossible to access, patients cannot determine whether their local hospital provides the care they need. The hospital transparency bill would provide New Yorkers with the tools to determine whether their hospital provides the care they seek prior to admission and would help the state to identify communities where particular services are completely unavailable. In doing so, the bill lays the groundwork to expand access to care in health care deserts around the state.

Protect Health Data Privacy

It is impossible to have an abortion—or to help someone obtain one—without leaving a digital trail. There will be search histories, email exchanges, phone records, travel itineraries, or Fitbit or period-tracker app data. The same is true for gender-affirming care. In fact, electronic health data has already been used to prosecute people for supporting others to access abortion care. The New York Health Information Privacy Act will give New Yorkers control over the electronic health data generated when they use apps, devices, and digital tools like Fitbits, smartwatches, and period tracking apps. This bill is what New Yorkers need to broadly protect their electronic health data.

Give People Control of Their Electronic Health Records

Most health care providers keep electronic health records, which make a patient’s entire medical record—including information about abortion and gender-affirming care—automatically available to anyone with access to an electronic health records system, even across state lines. This automatic sharing supports continuity of care but can expose New York patients and providers to criminalization, especially if they travel or move to a state that bans abortion or gender-affirming care. It can also expose them to discrimination by other providers within New York State. In fact, the primary way that people who are criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes come to law enforcement’s attention is because a health care provider reported them. New York must pass legislation to require electronic health record companies to create the ability to segment health records and suppress sensitive information at a patient’s direction. This will enable patients to reap the benefits of electronic health records without the risk that information about their abortion, gender-affirming care, or other sensitive health care will be used against them.

Support the Economic Security of Pregnant New Yorkers

Most New Yorkers do not have the ability to take time off of work to address serious health needs without putting their job and economic security at risk. New York’s Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) program provides benefits to New Yorkers who need time off from work to tend to their own health needs. But it does not include job protection, and it has been capped at $170/week since 1989—far below the current cost of living. Adding insult to injury, while a worker who needs time off to recover is forced to make impossible choices, under New York’s Paid Family Leave (PFL) program, their partner is eligible for job-protected time off and a portion of their normal wages while they take care of them.

The status quo is particularly harmful for Black, Brown, and Indigenous pregnant people, who experience disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity. These New Yorkers would especially benefit from job-protected time off to keep themselves and their pregnancies healthy, and to keep them from being plunged into poverty.

New York must support workers who need to take time off to attend to their own health needs, including pregnancy, pregnancy loss, and neonatal loss. Lawmakers should pass legislation to raise the Temporary Disability Insurance benefit cap and align it with Paid Family Leave benefits. This legislation should also ensure that people using Temporary Disability Insurance can keep their jobs and their health insurance, and permit people to use TDI intermittently so that they can take leave when they need it.

Protect the Rights of Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, Nonbinary, and Intersex Individuals in New York Prisons and Jails

Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, Nonbinary, and Intersex (TGNCNBI) New Yorkers are notoriously policed and criminalized, and as a result, disproportionately likely to be incarcerated.

Incarceration is dehumanizing for anyone, but TGNCNBI people, especially those who are Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, are particularly likely to experience harassment, degradation, and violence. During processing and while in custody, people whose gender expression does not conform to their sex assigned at birth are frequently misgendered and referred to in demeaning ways. Most TGNCNBI individuals are placed in facilities that do not match their gender identities or that otherwise put their safety at risk. Improper housing regularly leads to violence, and when TGNCNBI people are attacked, they are often put in involuntary protective custody—which is functionally the same as solitary confinement—for extended periods of time.

New York must pass the Gender Identity Respect, Dignity, and Safety (GIRDS) Act to keep TGNCNBI people safer when they are incarcerated. The bill requires prisons and jails to presumptively house people consistent with their gender identities, unless they opt out. It also mandates that staff respect a person’s gender identity in all contexts, including name and pronoun use and during searches. Finally, the legislation mandates that people have access to clothing, toiletry items, and grooming standards consistent with their gender identity, and puts limits on the use of involuntary protective custody.

Protect Abortion and Gender-Affirming Care

Gender-affirming care and abortion care are under attack across the U.S. In 2024 alone, more than 116 bills were introduced across the country targeting medically necessary health care for TGNCNB people (Because these bills typically include exemptions for identical treatments when forced onto intersex youth, this agenda refers only to TGNCNB people without adding an “I” for intersex.). Ten have become law, adding to the 26 bills that were enacted in 2023. Meanwhile, since Roe v. Wade was overturned, nearly half of U.S. states have banned or severely restricted abortion access, and the Trump administration is poised to further decimate access across the country.

New York must stand up to attacks on abortion and gender-affirming care by passing laws that prevent our state from participating in attempts to stigmatize or punish providers, patients, families, or those who support them. The state took important first steps in June 2022, when it enacted some protections for providers, patients, helpers, and seekers of abortion care. And in 2023, lawmakers expanded those protections to include gender-affirming care providers, helpers, patients, and their family members. Legislators must return in 2025 to shore up these laws in light of new and emerging threats and to close loopholes that undermine existing protections. This includes clarifying that New York courts have jurisdiction over families who move to New York or come to New York so that a child can receive gender-affirming care. The Legislature must also extend protection to cover all providers who offer gender-affirming care, including therapists and speech pathologists, among others. Additionally, New York must pass legislation to prevent private entities, like hospitals and clinics, from sharing information related to reproductive health care or gender-affirming care at the request of hostile state or federal officials. And finally, lawmakers must pass legislation to empower the state Attorney General to enforce these protections.

For decades, New York has been a beacon for people all over the country seeking abortion and gender-affirming care. We must be a place where people can go when they can no longer get the care they need in their home states.

Protect Privacy in Name and Gender Marker Changes

The vast majority of name changes—including those related to marriage, divorce, adoption, and citizenship—are private. Name and sex marker changes that proceed through the courts are a glaring, and dangerous, exception to this rule. Those who must rely on the courts to change their names or sex markers are often the most in need of confidentiality to protect their safety: namely transgender New Yorkers and survivors of intimate partner violence. In 2021, New York passed the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), streamlining the process to change the name and sex marker on a New York identity document and making the process more protective of an individual’s privacy. However, since the GRA was enacted, mandatory electronic filing, or e-filing, has become standard, and when a person applies for a name or sex marker change through the courts, a clerk must put the file in a public database before a judge can see the papers and sign a sealing order. Because of e-filing, the intimate, legally sensitive information required as part of a name or sex marker change application is now available and searchable online. Now people’s new names, old names, addresses, and other personally identifiable information are posted online. So are birth certificates, driver’s licenses, immigration documents, medical records, orders of protection, and more. These records can easily expose individuals to danger by outing a person as transgender or revealing an intimate partner violence survivor’s current address to their abuser. In order to prevent this problem and keep people who use the courts to change their names and/or sex markers safe, New York must pass legislation to require that name and sex marker changes be kept private.

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