The New York City Council passed a suite of legislation Thursday intended to battle antisemitism — and to formalize NYPD policy toward protests at religious and educational facilities — leaving it up to Mayor Zohran Mamdani to try to block the bills or let them become law.
Council Speaker Julie Menin told reporters before the vote that she’s received no signal that Mamdani would veto her signature bill, which would compel the city’s police commissioner to lay out official department procedure for its longstanding practice of establishing buffer zones around religious institutions during protest activity.
Mamdani has repeatedly refused to take a stand on the issue, though he has acknowledged concerns against the bill from civil rights organizations and left-wing activists in his base who have targeted synagogues and yeshivas with anti-Israel demonstrations.
“I have many conversations with the mayor, we meet one-on-one all the time. He hasn’t indicated to me that he will do that,” Menin said when asked about the potential for a veto.
The NYPD told the Council it had “no objections” to a revised version of the proposal at a council hearing in February, which would typically signal the mayor, who oversees the police department, intends to sign the legislation, or take no action, at which point it would automatically become law after 30 days. The bill had 35 co-sponsors and passed with 44 of 51 council members voting in favor, well in excess of the two-thirds majority needed to override a mayoral veto.
Far closer was the vote on a bill advanced by Bronx Councilman Eric Dinowitz, chair of the body’s Jewish Caucus, which would similarly obligate Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to create formal protocol for police security perimeters — but near educational institutions rather than religious ones. Michael Gerber, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal affairs, expressed hesitation as to this measure at last month’s hearing, arguing that a single uniform policy may not be appropriate to police actions around private property.
Dinowitz maintained after the vote that the bill’s language makes clear the NYPD should only establish perimeters around entrances and exits onto public parks and sidewalks, not school facilities themselves.
“We wanted to be clear that the intent of the bill is not to police what’s going on at college campuses,” Dinowitz told reporters.
Still, the bill passed with just 30 votes, four shy of what it would require to overcome a veto.