The 2024 Session In Review: Preserving Religious Liberty
Written by on January 4, 2025
[[{“value”:”
New York Families Foundation’s work covers four different broad areas of public policy: Protecting human life, promoting strong families, preserving religious liberty, and proclaiming justice and mercy. This article will summarize the events of the 2024 legislative session as they relate to preserving religious liberty.
Advocating for religious liberty in New York in the 2020s means swimming against the political tide. The New York State Legislature is dominated by New York City liberals, who (accurately) see religious liberty as an obstacle in the path of their pro-abortion, pro-LGBT agenda. During the 2024 state legislative session, two damaging anti-religious liberty bills came close to becoming law. Neither bill was enacted, however; one was vetoed, while another fell short of passage in either house of the Legislature. NYFF thanks the Lord for sparing the state of New York. At the same time, we are acutely aware that these two bills are not going away.
One of the two anti-religious liberty bills that nearly became law in 2024 is the Nonpublic Dignity for All Students Act (NDASA) (Bill S.3180-A-Hoylman-Sigal/A.1829-B-Jean-Pierre). NDASA is portrayed as an anti-bullying bill; however, it would also impose an LGBT agenda on nonpublic schools. The bill would ban discrimination against students based on “actual or perceived race, color, weight, national origin, ethnic group, religion, religious practice, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or sex.” (The term “gender” is defined to mean “actual or perceived sex,” and includes “a person’s gender identity or expression.”) On its face, NDASA would make it unlawful for Christian schools to limit admission to students from within their own respective faith traditions. Furthermore, New York courts would almost certainly interpret NDASA to require Christian schools to refer to “transgender” students using opposite-sex names and pronouns and to grant “transgender” students access to opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. NDASA might even be used to pressure Christian schools to allow “transgender” students to compete in opposite-sex sporting events.
By May of this year, NDASA had been approved by the Senate Education Committee and by the Assembly Education Committee and had advanced to third reading in the State Senate, meaning that it was eligible for a vote. On May 28, the bill was completely rewritten. The eleventh-hour revisions to NDASA caused concern that the bill was being readied for passage. NYFF’s affiliated lobbying organization, New York Families Action, quickly responded. NYFA released a revised position paper warning legislators about NDASA and updated its online action alert, encouraging voters to write to their legislators to express opposition. On June 8, the legislative session came to an end with no further action on the bill.
The other of the two anti-religious liberty bills that nearly became law in 2024 is the Targeting Hospitals that Refuse to Abort for Subsequent Harassment (THRASH) Bill (Bill S.1003-A-Hinchey/A.733-A-Rozic). This bill would require the New York State Department of Health to publish an annual list of policy-based exclusions from every general hospital in the state. This measure would allow the state to found—and then to publicize—the names of every New York hospital that declines to perform abortions. This information could, in turn, be used to target those hospitals with negative feedback and pressure them into changing their life-affirming policies.
The THRASH Bill passed both houses of the Legislature. On December 21, 2024, however, Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed the legislation. Gov. Hochul, an aggressively pro-abortion governor who has repeatedly insulted the pro-life community, did not veto the bill because she disagreed with it; rather, her veto message (Veto No. 126) stated that the bill would have required state expenditures that were not included in the budget. Regardless of the reasons for the Governor’s veto, the veto is a victory for religious liberty—and for life.
Several pro-religious liberty bills failed to receive floor votes in the Legislature this year. Those bills include a bill to restore the religious exemption from student vaccination mandate (Bill S.118-Gallivan/A.6676-DiPietro), a bill to allow nonprofits to obtain immediate property tax exemptions when they purchase real property (Bill A.1288-A-Williams), and a bill that would streamline the government approval process for certain church real estate transactions (Bill S.229-Gallivan). However, several anti-religious liberty bills also failed to pass. Those bills include a measure barring hospitals from adopting pro-life employee conduct policies (Bill S.6616-A-May/A.5297-A-Paulin) (this bill advanced to third reading in the Assembly); mandatory abortion training for resident doctors (Bill S.6368-Parker/A.1917-Glick); and a mandate requiring state contractors, including faith-based organizations, to provide their employees with insurance coverage for “gender reassignment procedures” (Bill S.4287-Cooney/A.1936-Gonzalez-Rojas).
The post The 2024 Session In Review: Preserving Religious Liberty appeared first on New York Families Foundation.
“}]]
