Faculty school unions and the New York Civil Liberties Union are turning up the warmth of their opposition to a invoice they are saying would enormously limit the flexibility to protest or rally at colleges and faculty campuses. Council Speaker Julie Menin says the invoice is critical to assist fight hate and antisemitism.
The invoice, launched by Bronx Councilmember Eric Dinowitz final month, would order the police commissioner to ascertain a “buffer zone” at each entrance and exit of private and non-private colleges, faculty campuses and academic amenities and to provide you with a plan to deal with protests in these areas. Menin, Dinowitz and the Council’s new Committee to Fight Hate, the place the invoice was launched, declare the proposals promote higher transparency for the NYPD round protests and defend free speech.
Although the invoice doesn’t explicitly bar protests by unions or any group, organized labor and the NYCLU stay involved that it offers police higher management to find out who can protest on colleges and campuses.
Skilled Workers Congress-CUNY president James Davis famous that the police division already has the ability to find out if a protest is unsafe and to arrange barricades, dole out permits for big gatherings and amplified sound and defend entry to sidewalks, entrances and exits.
“The NYPD already has broad discretion to determine if there’s a threat to public safety,” he mentioned in an interview Wednesday morning. “In fact, the NYPD has exceeded their authority,” as evidenced by latest lawsuits and settlements by which the NYPD has been discovered to have violated the First Modification rights of demonstrators, added Davis.
“We feel that [the Council] should just go back to the drawing board entirely,” he mentioned.
Dinowitz’s invoice was the topic of a packed listening to on Wednesday of the Council’s Committee to Fight Hate, which thought-about numerous payments together with one that might set up comparable “buffer zones” at homes of worship.
The NYPD expressed skepticism over each “buffer zone” payments. The company’s head of authorized issues, Michael Gerber, testified that whereas the NYPD condemns antisemitism, it’s “obligated to ensure the rights of protesters without regard to the content of protected speech.” He additionally voiced concern that some language in Dinowitz’s invoice, which might order the company to provide you with a “buffer zone” plan even for personal colleges and universities, could also be legally doubtful.
Councilmember Eric Dinowitz (D-Bronx) speaks at a Metropolis Corridor press convention a few invoice to create a buffer zone for protests round homes of worship, Feb. 25, 2026. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Dinowitz and Menin defended their efforts to make sure police transparency at instructional amenities and elsewhere — and denied that any of the payments up for a listening to on Wednesday threatened free speech.
“We are instructing the NYPD to come up with a plan, and to make transparent that plan, so that everyone no matter where you are on this issue, whether you’re outside or inside of school, can have transparency and can know what you’re getting from the city government – this is what people deserve,” mentioned Dinowitz.
“In creating these buffer zones and making that plan public, we are preserving everyone’s civil liberties and enforcing and protecting people’s right to feel safe,” added Dinowitz, invoking the picture of youngsters being afraid to put on hijabs or yarmulkes of their colleges.
An amended model of his invoice posted late Monday eradicated language figuring out that the “buffer zone” would measure 100 toes from each entrance and exit of any instructional facility, which UAW Area 9A president Brandon Mancilla mentioned was too excessive and would primarily bar protests anyplace in a metropolis as densely populated as New York.
It additionally extra explicitly asserts unions’ federal proper to picket their employers. These modifications are a results of suggestions from a number of unions at a gathering convened by the NYC Central Labor Council final week, together with PSC-CUNY and the UAW, with representatives from Menin and Dinowitz’s workplaces.
However PSC-CUNY and NYCLU nonetheless strongly oppose the invoice and are anticipated to testify in opposition to it on the listening to on Wednesday. United Auto Staff Area 9A, which represents educating workers at a number of non-public universities together with Columbia, additionally opposes the invoice.
Justin Harrison, senior coverage counsel on the NYCLU, mentioned the group opposes the committee’s total slate of payments, together with the proposal that might limit protests at homes of worship.
“It’s also troubling that the Council amended these bills barely 36 hours before the Council hearing, leaving the public with little time to review and prepare a response,” Harrison mentioned in a press release to THE CITY. “At a time when the Trump administration is actively targeting, arresting, and even killing dissenters, lawmakers must reject these rushed, ill-advised proposals that will criminalize and punish protest.”
Menin created the committee in January, one week into her tenure as Speaker, and shortly after launched a five-point plan to assist “combat antisemitism, strengthen protections for schools and all houses of worship, and expand Holocaust education citywide.” She cited knowledge from the NYPD displaying antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of reported hate crimes in 2025, although solely 10% of metropolis residents are Jewish.
Her proposals got here on the heels of the police’s widely-criticized response to protesters who picketed the Park East Synagogue, which had rented house to a corporation that helps Jews transfer to Israel and to settlements on the occupied West Financial institution. Jewish leaders, together with Menin, condemned the demonstrations by pro-Palestinian protesters as antisemitic.
Intro 175, the invoice creating the so-called “buffer zone” on colleges and faculty campuses, presently has 23 co-sponsors within the Metropolis Council, under the brink for approval. Council majority chief Shaun Abreu, whose district consists of Columbia College and Metropolis Faculty, has not signed onto the invoice. He declined to touch upon Tuesday.
(Disclosure: Irizarry Aponte is a PSC member in her position as an adjunct teacher on the Craig Newmark Faculty of Journalism at CUNY.)
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