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Religious buffer zones still on the table in Albany
By
Jimmy Vielkind
Published Apr 2, 2026
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Courtesy of Micah Lasher for Congress
By
Jimmy Vielkind
Published Apr 2, 2026
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This column originally appeared in The Politics Brief, our weekly newsletter on the people, power and policies that shape New Yorkers' lives.
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State lawmakers are feeling bullish on buffer zones around houses of worship after the New York City Council voted to increase policing of religious sites.
“I think it bodes well,” said Scott Richman, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that combats antisemitism. “You've got a supermajority that essentially voted in favor of a buffer-zone bill.”
But city councilmembers stripped their bills of controversial provisions that would have created a 100-foot protest-free buffer zone around institutions after pushback from civil liberties groups. Mayor Zohran Mamdani also expressed reservations about restricting the right to protest.
The legislation that passed instead requires the NYPD commissioner “to establish a plan to address and contain the risk of physical obstruction, physical injury, intimidation, and interference at places of religious worship while preserving and protecting the rights to free speech, assembly and protest.”
There is no physically defined distance where protesters can’t gather.
A state proposal would create 25-foot buffer zones around houses of worship and facilities offering reproductive health care. Assemblymember Micah Lasher, an Upper West Side Democrat who sponsors the measure, emphasized that it is different from what passed in the city.
“I think there is a general sense that the current state of the law is not quite sufficient to deal with some of the situations we've been facing,” Lasher said. “And so, the City Council has acted, and my hope is that the Legislature will act as well.”
Lasher’s proposal was drafted in response to protests last year outside the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. The protest chants included “Death to the IDF,” a reference to the Israel Defense Forces, and one person held a sign that said “Israel has no right to exist” behind metal barricades near the entrance.
It’s already a crime in New York to intimidate or block someone who seeks to enter a house of worship or an abortion clinic. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2014 struck down a Massachusetts law that created 35-foot buffer zones around abortion clinics.
Gov. Kathy Hochul included a version of the buffer-zone measure in her $263 billion state budget. Her spokesperson pointed to comments last week in which the Democratic governor said the issue is “important.”
Opponents said the budget language could just as easily be watered down like the city legislation was. Justin Harrison, senior policy counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said his organization’s First Amendment concerns about the city legislation “didn’t disappear but were sort of mitigated” when the specific buffers were eliminated.
“Everybody's in closed-door negotiations right now,” Harrison said. “We don't know what the final product of those negotiations might look like.”
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CORRECTION: The web version of the Politics Brief newsletter includes the proper spelling of Assemblymember Micah Lasher's name.
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Jimmy Vielkind
Jimmy Vielkind covers how state government and politics affect people throughout New York. He has covered Albany since 2008, most recently as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Jimmy led a team of reporters that won a New York Press Club award for coverage of Andrew Cuomo’s downfall and was on a team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for coverage of Amazon’s HQ2 process. A native of the Capitol Region, Jimmy has two degrees in urban planning. His position is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Reach Jimmy at [email protected].
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