Our right to protest is more important than ever. New Yorkers, like people across the country, are increasingly taking to the streets to defend our freedoms, from the No Kings and Hands Off marches, to anti-war rallies, and spontaneous protests challenging the lawlessness of ICE.
Given this, you might think New York’s leaders would do everything possible to defend the right to speak out. You’d be wrong.
City and state lawmakers are instead pushing legislation to create no-speech zones, euphemistically called “buffer zones,” where protest is forbidden. It’s a dangerous move.
Gov. Hochul and some state lawmakers have called for 25-foot no-speech zones around the entrances and exits of every house of worship and reproductive health clinic in the state. The New York City Council is also considering legislation that directs the NYPD to come up with a plan for no-speech zones outside houses of worship and educational institutions.
Together, they could outlaw protest on thousands of blocks — and even whole neighborhoods — across the state.
Take the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who have demonstrated against the Trump regime at Hands Off and No Kings protests. Their routes have come within the no-speech zones proposed by Hochul, meaning marchers could risk arrest no matter how peaceful their protests.
Proponents of no-speech zones have led the charge by saying they’re needed to protect New Yorkers’ ability to practice their faiths and to confront a rise in antisemitism. Let’s be clear: We all have a responsibility to fight back against hate. Religious freedom is essential, and the organization I lead has long fought to safeguard it.
But our state already has laws against obstruction, intimidation, interference, violence, or threatening behavior when entering or leaving a house of worship or reproductive health clinics.
We must confront hate, but we do that best by fostering dialogue, compassion, and connection. We can’t arrest our way to a climate of understanding.
For any new restriction on protest to pass constitutional muster, there must be a lengthy, documented history of people facing intimidation, obstruction, or violence. No such record exists for houses of worship in New York.
Instead, these proposed no-speech zones risk adding fuel to the Trump regime’s attacks on free speech.
The Department of Justice is already distorting and stretching existing statutes to go after New York demonstrators. Look no further than last month, when the DOJ launched an investigation into whether immigrants’ rights protesters committed federal crimes while demonstrating at a town hall held by Rep. Tom Suozzi on Long Island.
Suozzi’s town hall was not a religious event, but it took place at a Jewish temple, and the Department of Justice is using that as a pretext for a sham investigation of protestors at the event, based on “religious animus.”
New York lawmakers must not give Trump or other bad actors more ways to go after speech they don’t like.
There’s also the perennial problem that police historically have enforced new criminal laws disproportionately.
Creating no-speech zones across the state would increase police presence outside of places of worship and other covered facilities, putting protestors of color and LGBTQ demonstrators at new risk of discrimination, violence, and arrest. Police are also more likely to come down on people whose speech is controversial or they disfavor, risking discrimination based on viewpoint.
There has not been a time in recent memory when the need for protest has been greater or when more New Yorkers were using their voice. Now more than ever our city and state leaders must not make the mistake of chilling dissent.
Lieberman is the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.