Civil liberties groups are warning that possible changes to the city’s laws regulating protests, including a measure that would create a 100-foot buffer zone outside of schools and religious sites, could infringe on New Yorkers’ First Amendment rights.
The concerns come ahead of a public hearing on Wednesday at the City Council, which is considering a package of bills proponents say are aimed in part at combating antisemitism and other forms of religious bias.
The measures would in part direct the NYPD to come up with plans for establishing security perimeters during protests outside synagogues, churches, mosques and other religious institutions, as well as schools and colleges.
The measures follow the tumult on college campuses across the country, including at Columbia University, SUNY and CUNY campuses, after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Those events fueled charges of antisemitism and Islamophobia on the campuses and beyond.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, many campuses have conducted self-examinations aimed at addressing antisemitism, and otherwise improving the religious climate on their campuses. The protest bills would represent the City Council’s further entry into how New Yorkers assert their views.
The bills’ backers say the measures are needed to ensure worshippers and students can freely access religious and educational institutions during demonstrations without facing harassment. Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, a sponsor of the legislation, said in recent years protest speech had frequently “entered into harmful language.”
“ We've seen over the past few years, both at educational institutions and at religious institutions, people walking in and being harassed or in some cases prevented from entering those institutions,” Dinowitz said.
But critics contend the bills give the NYPD too much latitude to determine which protests merit extra policing. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has her own misgivings, according to a department spokesperson.
“Commissioner Tisch has concerns with the initial drafting of the bills, and she is working closely with the speaker’s office to ensure that the language of the bill maintains the NYPD’s flexibility to both protect houses of worship and facilitate first amendment rights,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Delaney Kempner said in a statement.
Asked about the legislation at a press conference last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani noted the police commissioner’s apprehensions, which he did not specify, and said he had directed his law department to study the legality of the measures.
“I care deeply about ensuring that New Yorkers can worship freely in their own city, and that we also protect their First Amendment rights, all at the same time,” Mamdani said.
Buffer zones at protests
The city legislation comes as Gov. Kathy Hochul has also proposed a 25-foot protest buffer zone around houses of worship so people can pray or participate in gatherings, as she put it in January, “without threats of violence or protests.”
The Supreme Court, in a long line of cases, has allowed time, place and manner restrictions on protests if they are content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and leave open ample alternative channels for communication.
In a 2014 case, the court rejected a fixed, 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics, ruling they were unconstitutional because the restriction was not narrowly tailored. However, in a 2000 case, the court upheld a more limited “floating” buffer zone of just 8 feet. The court’s decisions make plain that the totality of the circumstances matter in a constitutional review, including whether the restriction is content neutral.
Justin Harrison, senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, cited the 2014 Supreme Court decision, in McCullen v. Coakley, in noting his objection.
“What the court said was, you simply can't do that,” Harrison said, “35 feet isn't going to allow for things like face-to-face conversations, handing out pamphlets, things like that.”
Steve Wasserman, a retired public defender who serves as an adjunct associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, called buffer zones reasonable measures to ensure that demonstrators’ rights were protected at the same time that worshipers and students were allowed to freely come and go from their respective institutions. He said the Supreme Court had upheld buffer zones in the 2000 decision, Hill v. Colorado.
“A certain amount of distance has to be maintained,” said Wasserman, noting the court’s ruling in Hill v. Colorado. “The NYPD has been doing it for a long time. They do it rather well.” He added, “ it's an artform.”
Henry Robins, a spokesperson for Menin, said the legislation was meant to protect New Yorkers’ safe access to schools and houses of worship while “fully respecting” their rights to free speech. “It does not limit protest activity,” Robins said in a statement.
Dinowitz said in an interview that members of the city’s Jewish community had seen “the most significant spike in hate crimes” in recent years but that the bills weren’t exclusively meant to protect Jewish New Yorkers.
“This is really a package of legislation to protect everyone in our city,” Dinowitz said, adding that New Yorkers should make their voices heard at the Wednesday public hearing.
Aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war
For supporters and critics alike, the student protests after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel's subsequent military invasion of Gaza are very much on the mind.
In a statement, Councilmember Joann Ariola, a Republican representing Southeast Queens as well as a sponsor of the bills, said, “during the waves of protests we saw in recent years, we heard from many, many New Yorkers that they were afraid for their safety while trying to simply get an education.”
“If people want to protest, they can,” Ariola said. “They just need to do so in a way that doesn't impact students who just are trying to go about their lives.”
Critics said the proposed legislation was concerning, especially amid nationwide protests against federal immigration policies.
James Davis, the president of CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress, which represents approximately 30,000 faculty and staff members at CUNY, said the bills would affect as many as 3,000 schools and colleges across the city, and “tremendously narrow” the ability of New Yorkers to exercise their rights.
He also called the legislation an overreach because police already had “broad discretion in these matters.”
“Whatever the intent of these bills may be, they are really susceptible to abuse,” Davis said.
Baher Azmy, the legal director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that members of the City Council were using the pretext of security “to silence activism in support of Palestine and against the rising authoritarian tide in this country.”
“At a time when we are witnessing outrageous law enforcement abuses and attacks on dissenters, that New York legislators would seek to create a massive police presence in our civic spaces only adds to the dangerous climate of repression in this country,” Azmy said.
