A4763 (O'Donnell)/S82 (Hoylman)

Description: Requires local education agencies to produce policies, procedures, and guidelines, which direct teachers and other school employees on how to respond to students who have demonstrated suicidal thoughts and ideation.

Who does it impact?

Though this bill creates a safety net for youth as a whole, this bill specifically impacts marginalized students for the better, including LGBTQ+ and BIPOC youth who experience significantly high rates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. LGB youth almost four times more likely than heterosexual youth to attempt suicide, with that rate even higher for TGNCNB youth.

What will this bill do?

Since it has been proven that teachers are usually the first point of contact students make in letting someone know of their suicidal ideation, this bill amends the current NYS education law to include more concrete procedures and plans for educators and faculty to address mental health matters like so. This includes tools and training on spotting possible signs of suicidal ideation in students, crisis intervention, knowledge on requesting mental health assessments and emergency services for students, intersectional mental health information including LGBTQ+ understanding, resources on addressing the stigma around suicide and mental health issues, a mental health referral process put into place for students in connection to community resources available, and a school reentry process for students dealing with suicidal ideation. 

Why is it important?

Youth suicide and suicidal ideation was a already worsening crisis before COVID-19, which has only gotten worse due to the pandemic. All students, especially LGBTQ+ and intersectionally marginalized youth should know that if they build up the courage to confide in a trusted school district official regarding a matter as personal as mental health, that they will be guided to set professionals and guaranteed resources that will bring them back to a place where they feel their life is worth living.

A691(Rozic)/S2809(Sepulveda)

Description: Requires state and local correctional facilities to presumptively house transgender, gender non-conforming, non-Binary, and intersex (TGNCNBI) individuals consistently with their gender identities; ensures that correctional officers and staff address people by their names and pronouns; guarantees people access to commissary items, clothing, and other materials that are consistent with their gender identities; and establishes a right to be searched by officers of the same gender identity. It also includes a thirty-day limit on involuntary protective custody or solitary confinement. This bill will also enable people to opt-out of being housed consistently with their gender identity if they have overriding safety concerns.

Who does it impact?

Everyone deserves safety, respect, and dignity, including when they are incarcerated.  One in six people who identifies as transgender reports having been incarcerated at some point in their lifetime, and this figure jumps to nearly one in two for Black transgender women.  TGNCNBI people in the New York State carceral system regularly face vicious physical, verbal and sexual harassment: they are nearly ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted, than the general prison population.  They are also routinely denied medical care, misgendered, and “dead named” (or called by their former name). Incarceration is dehumanizing for anyone, but TGNCNBI people, especially those who are Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, as well as Transgender women housed in male facilities, are especially likely to experience harassment, degradation, and violence.  The Gender Identity Respect, Dignity, and Safety Act would implement lifesaving reforms to help keep people safe and ensure that they are treated with dignity and respect while incarcerated.

What will this bill do?

• Requires that commissary items offered, like clothing and material, be accessible to individuals in a way that is consistent with the person’s gender identity. 
• Requires that all incarcerated individuals be placed in housing that is consistent with the person’s gender identity unless the person opts-out of such placement, further ensuring the safety of TGNCNBI and validation of people.  
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• Places a thirty-day limit on involuntary protective custody or solitary confinement.

Why is it important?

Both within the general society and within the LGBTQ+ community itself, TGNCNBI people face much higher rates of discrimination, violence, lost opportunity, and lack of access to basic needs. They are also notoriously over-policed and over-criminalized, and thus disproportionately likely to be incarcerated. Simply for being who they are, many TGNCNBI people get caught in the revolving door that is the prison industrial complex.  Even as we work to reform the criminal legal system more holistically, we must enact life-saving measures like this one to keep people who are in the system today safe and ensure that they are treated with dignity and respect.

S2584 (Brouk)/ A6616 (Nolan) 

Description: Requires that every K-12 student in public and charter schools receive comprehensive, age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education.

What will this bill do?

This is a common-sense measure that requires the Commissioner of Education, in consultation with the Commissioner of Health and a broad range of experts including teachers, social workers, school nurses, school administrators, school board members, parent teacher association members, and those with expertise in intimate partner violence, sexual assault, reproductive and sexual health care, and serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth, to create a comprehensive sex education (CSE) program that includes:  a model curriculum reflecting the national sexuality education standards and resources for teachers to support implementation. School districts can elect to use the Department of Education’s (SED) curriculum or to develop a  curriculum that is right for their student population so long as it meets the standards included in the SED curriculum.

Who does it impact?

CSE programs empower young people to develop critical knowledge and skills that enable healthy relationships. When schools take measures to educate their students about such topics as consent, bodily autonomy, and dating violence, as well as to enact school policies aimed at prevention, teens are less likely to be victimized, more likely to avoid perpetrating intimate partner violence, and sexual harassment is significantly reduced.

CSE helps youth delay the onset of sexual activity, and when teens do become sexually active, CSE programs lead to improved protective behaviors for reducing pregnancy and STIs, including having fewer partners, better communication with partners about risk, and more consistent condom use.

CSE is also critical for LGBTQI youth.  It helps students understand sexual orientation and gender identity, destigmatizes discussions of sexuality and gender, and promotes respect, understanding, and inclusion. By showing diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and family structures, comprehensive sex ed shows LGBTQI youth that they are not alone and shows their straight, cisgender classmates that they exist.

Research also demonstrates that the social and emotional competencies cultivated through CSE improve academic outcomes. A 2015 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-led meta-analysis of programs to prevent school dropout demonstrated that social-emotional skills programs led to significant reductions in dropout rates, from an average of 21.1% in control groups to 10.2% in program groups.

Why is it important?

There is currently no requirement that New York schools provide comprehensive sexuality education. Of the public schools across New York that do provide sex education, the curriculum is often inaccurate, incomplete, or biased. It often fails to prepare students to make healthy, informed, and consensual decisions about relationships. LGBTQI relationships are often stigmatized or ignored entirely. Even basic information about anatomy is inaccurate, and materials often reinforce negative gender stereotypes and sexism. The lack of CSE leaves New York students ill equipped to keep themselves safe and healthy.

Furthermore, experts and researchers agree that CSE must begin in elementary school and continue through subsequent grade levels so that students may build upon their knowledge and skills as they mature. Just as students learn to count in kindergarten so that they can do calculus in college, kindergarteners need to learn foundational skills for healthy friendships, communication, and bodily autonomy so that as teenagers they can receive medically accurate, non-stigmatizing education about health care and relationships.

S3075 (Salazar)/ A849 (Gottfried)

Description: Relates to the decriminalization of sex work; repealer

People who trade sex or who identify as sex workers, whether as a form of survival or as a choice, have historically been harassed and criminalized by the police. Those most impacted are Black and undocumented transgender women, because of a criminal record that continues to bar them from access to opportunities and can result in deportation. This legislation will amend NY Penal Law article 230 for consenting adults who trade sex for resources and/or money. It will decriminalize the action of collaborating with peers, patronizing adult sex workers, allow a working space where business are permitted. This bill upholds all anti-trafficking statuses that protect survivors and minors from exploitation and coercion.

Who does it impact?

This bill impacts sex workers who are LGBTQ+ identifying, specifically Black and Latinx transwomen as well as the undocumented migrant intersection. As a whole, this measure positively impacts all throughout New York State who are currently criminalized for their work in sex trade.

What will this bill do?

This bill will decriminalize the sex trade, acknowledging the years of evidence-based research that points to full decriminalization as having the best outcomes for health and safety and the realization of human rights for all. In the process, this measure will also assist with record relief for sex workers and survivors of trafficking. By decriminalizing sex work, we as a society can better address and focus resources on human trafficking and exploitation rather than target consensual adults.

Why is it important?

Though sex work should be a choice for all, this is not the case for many. The vast majority of marginalized individuals like Black and Latinx transwomen, as well as undocumented migrants, consider sex work to be “survival sex” because of the high rates of discrimination they face in areas including healthcare, education, incarceration, and socioeconomic opportunity. This is a civil rights matter because sex workers are not receiving the same benefits those in the legal workforce receive, like rape victim compensation funds provided by the government. This is a human rights matter because an existence is being criminalized; layered in unnecessary and violent stigmatization. Once sex work is decriminalized, we can begin to further address the systemic issues intertwined in this matter.