New York has repealed a law known as a “walk while transgender” ban, which has been widely criticized for exposing black and Latino women to police harassment.
The revocation reaches statute 240.37, which prohibits loitering for prostitution purposes under the New York penal code and seals the records of anyone who has been convicted of the crime, meaning that they are no longer publicly visible in most cases. It is the result of years of legal challenges and the defense of civil rights activists, sex workers and other criminal justice reformers. The bill passed both chambers in the legislature and was signed by New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday night.
“This very discriminatory law that was enacted in 1976 to, in quotes, ‘clean up the streets of Times Square’ has become the most discriminatory law in the New York state statute,” said Amy Paulin, the state legislator who sponsored the bill to repeal of law in the Assembly during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Some of the defenders and lawmakers who supported the repeal were brought to tears at a news conference earlier in the day, as they celebrated the bill’s imminent approval, and told stories of police abuses under the guise of enforcing the law.
“Two years ago, when I moved to New York City, an NYPD officer used 240.37 to … force me into sexual acts. To this day, the trauma is still very real to me, ”said TS Candii, leader of the coalition Revoking the ban on walking while transgender, who also works with sex in the city. “Knowing that no one will ever have a profile or suffer traumas like mine again or that they will be profiled because of this law will certainly help me and many others to move forward with our healing.”
Melania Brown – whose sister Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco died after having a solitary confinement seizure on Rikers Island after being arrested for criminal assault and prostitution charges and unable to pay $ 501 on bail – said during the press conference that she was relieved for his sister’s death it had not been in vain.
“I am very happy that the repeal of the ban on ‘walking while transgender’ has been approved. (…) Although it does not relieve my pain, because my sister should be here with me, I am happy that her name was not in vain and will save many other girls from being traced, ”said Brown. “It should never have taken so long for this law to pass.”
The statute has been in force for about 45 years. It has been characterized as a way to stop and search women and transgender people, as it allows the police to stop and search anyone who believes they are involved in prostitution on the basis of nothing more than their appearance. Years of data show that these police stops have been used extensively to arrest black women and trans women in particular. Between 2012 and 2015, 85% of those arrested under the law were black or Latino, according to the language of the revocation project.
The Legal Aid Society sued the NYPD over the constitutionality of law enforcement in 2016. The case was resolved through mediation, and the NYPD revised its patrol guide, which governs arrest procedures, to say that arrests could not be made. made only on the basis of gender or clothing presentation. However, arrests increased in the following months. Kate Mogulescu, who was part of the team that moved the case, told the Brooklyn Eagle at the time that “the most direct way to resolve all these problems is to simply revoke the statute.”
The treatment of sex work and related crimes in the criminal justice system has been the subject of heated debates in New York in recent years. Previous efforts to repeal the bill have been halted in part because it has been mistaken for a broader movement to fully decriminalize sex work.
Jared Trujillo, political adviser to the Civil Liberties Union of New York and a former sex worker who campaigned for decriminalization, told BuzzFeed News that it was important to distinguish between repealing the loitering law and the broader debate about how to approach work sexual.
“When you look at this statute, he is a direct descendant of Jim Crow’s loitering laws, which punished blacks just for existing,” said Trujillo. “This is not a statute for sex work. Not at all. … It is a statute that allowed law enforcement to target people simply because they exist, and 85% of the people they target are black and brown women ”.
Trans black people, in particular, face overwhelming probabilities of incarceration and police harassment. Almost half of all black transgender people are incarcerated at some point in their lives, according to a study by the National Center for Transgender Equality. And 60% of transgender people in New York have suffered police harassment, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Protests against police violence and systemic anti-black racism last summer, including a historic march for the life of trans blacks in Brooklyn, have brought renewed attention to the repeal effort. “When those 15,000 New Yorkers shouted outside the Brooklyn Museum that the lives of trans black people are important, we heard you,” said Brad Hoylman, who sponsored the project in the New York State Senate.
Although similar statutes exist across the country, New York is the first state to repeal such a law, according to Hoylman.
The repeal and closure of old conviction records on charges of loitering reflect the will of a broad coalition of lawmakers and advocates, but any further changes to the laws governing sex work remain a matter of dispute.
In the absence of broader legislation, some district prosecutors also chose to resolve the problem on their own. Brooklyn district attorney Eric Gonzalez announced last week that he would refuse the prosecution or reject all cases of prostitution, in addition to any cases under the status of vagrancy. He called for conviction records under both statutes – of which there are more than 25,000 in Brooklyn – to be eliminated as well.
Some of the defenders who spoke at the news conference on Tuesday said they plan to continue to push for total decriminalization of sex work, which they say is necessary to ensure the safety of sex workers and prevent abuse by the police.
Jessica Ramos, another state senator, has been an outspoken advocate of decriminalization and called for continued focus on the issue.
“Now that we’re going through ‘walking while trans’ [repeal]”she said,” we need to … decriminalize sex work to ensure that our sex workers are recognized as the workers they are and are able to do their job safely. “