The Alliance for Quality Education strongly opposes S.8599 / A.9335 and Part K of the FY2027 Public Protection and General Government (PPGG) Executive Budget bill (S.9005 / A.10005), which would establish buffer zones prohibiting demonstrations within 25 feet of houses of worship and reproductive health facilities across New York. While the standalone bills apply broadly to groups of two or more people demonstrating or preparing to demonstrate near these sites, the Executive Budget language narrows its scope to demonstrations carried out with the intent to alarm or annoy people entering, exiting, working in, or using those facilities. In practice, both proposals expand police authority to restrict protest activity in ways that raise serious concerns about free expression and selective enforcement. Lawmakers should not be expanding police power at the expense of people’s rights has consequences for everyday people, particularly in our current political climate.
AQE is a statewide coalition of community organizing groups dedicated to organizing low-income Black, brown, and immigrant parents to advocate for the well-being of their children from birth through their school years. We are committed to education for liberation, grounded in racial, economic, and social justice. That vision depends on people being able to come together and make their voices heard without fear. When policies increase policing around community spaces, they make it harder for families to take part in public life and advocate for what their children need. Too often, our communities are asked to give up their voice in exchange for a sense of safety that never arrives.
For the families, students, and educators we organize with, coming together in public is how change happens. Parents gather outside schools to demand resources. Young people speak out against racism. Communities show up for one another in moments of harm and in moments of hope. This is what every day civic life and democracy looks like for us. These bills reach into those everyday acts. They make people hesitate. They introduce questions that need not be there, that is, whether it is safe to be present or to speak up at all. That kind of doubt does not protect communities, it makes them pull back. No one should have to weigh that question simply to stand on a sidewalk or be heard. For communities that are already surveilled more closely and policed more heavily, that hesitation carries a great deal of weight. When more people stop showing up, it’s not because some unmet needs have disappeared, it’s because the risk of fighting for it started to feel too high.
Existing New York State law already makes it a crime to injure, intimidate, interfere with, or physically obstruct people seeking reproductive health services or exercising religious freedom at a place of worship. It also prohibits intentional property damage to those facilities. State law already authorizes prosecutors to act when this kind of harm occurs. Federal law does the same, while still protecting peaceful protest. The protections are already in place. What is being proposed here moves well beyond that by placing new limits on speech, and this is a shift in every day life that our communities will quickly feel.
We also have serious concerns about how these bills fit with the First Amendment, which protects people’s right to speak and to engage with others in public spaces. It should be noted in McCullen v. Coakley (2014), the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a similar buffer zone law because it forcibly kept people too far apart to have real conversations and because it restricted more speech than necessary. The court made clear that even well-intentioned laws cannot cut off meaningful interaction in public spaces. In this New York State context, the proposed 25-foot zones would reach peaceful advocacy, leafleting, sign-holding, and even quiet, one-on-one conversations and other forms of engagement where no obstruction occurs. Constitutional doubts about this approach are not limited to civil liberties groups. These are the moments that often allow people to connect, listen, and sometimes even change their minds about things in the world. Limiting space for that kind of engagement risks shutting down the very exchanges that make public life meaningful.
For AQE, the threats here are about what our communities experience in their ordinary civic lives. For many families, especially Black and brown parents, immigrant communities, and young people, it can feel like increased scrutiny by the state and risk. For a lot of us, that feeling is already all too familiar. But in a moment when many communities are already navigating elevated fear, including fears connected to immigration enforcement, adding new restrictions as these will make it harder for people to gather in spaces that are otherwise designed to foster support and belonging.
If lawmakers want to reduce harm and build safer communities, the path forward should center on people, not punishment. That will mean making sure that existing laws are used when harm occurs, supporting efforts that calm conflict, and investing in community-based approaches that help people feel safe. Safety grows when people trust the systems around them. It grows when communities have room to come together and speak honestly about what they are facing.
For all of these reasons, AQE urges the Legislature to reject S.8599 / A.9335 and Part K of the Executive Budget proposal. New Yorkers do not need broader no-speech zones or wider police discretion, especially laws that endanger their constitutional right to protest. They need a future where communities can come together openly and keep fighting for something better without fear. Policies like these narrow the reach of people’s voices while claiming to protect them, and we know there is a better way forward.