New York Citys first Jewish council speaker is pressing ahead with a controversial proposal to give police broader authority to shield synagogues and other houses of worship from increasingly aggressive street protests.
According to the New York Post, City Council Speaker Julie Menin has introduced a bill that would empower the NYPD to set up protest buffer zones of up to 100 feet outside synagogues, churches, mosques, and other religious institutions whenever demonstrations are expected or underway.
The measure, unveiled Thursday, would authorize officers to create a security perimeter capped at 100 feet with the precise distance calibrated on a case-by-case basis depending on the threat environment and crowd conditions.
Menin framed the legislation as a necessary response to a surge in antisemitic incidents and targeted demonstrations that have rattled Jewish communities across the five boroughs.
"Jewish New Yorkers make up roughly 10% of our city's population yet last year they were the victims of more than half of all reported hate crimes," Menin said, adding, "That's a reality we cannot normalize and we cannot ignore."
The speaker, who recently became the first Jewish lawmaker to hold the Councils top post, cast the buffer-zone bill as one element of a broader five-point strategy to confront antisemitism with more than rhetoric. Her plan also calls for reimbursement programs to help private schools install security cameras, specialized security training for religious organizations, and $1.25 million in new funding for the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
The legislative push follows months of anti-Israel protests that have deliberately targeted synagogues and Jewish institutions, often featuring rhetoric that veers from political criticism into open bigotry.
Demonstrators have at times chanted explicitly pro-terror slogans, including declarations such as "we support Hamas," raising alarms among Jewish residents who see such language as an endorsement of violence against them.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has already floated a statewide measure that would create a 25-foot protest buffer zone around houses of worship, a more modest perimeter than the one Menin is proposing for the city. Her suggestion drew visible resistance from some on the left, with Mayor Zohran Mamdani notably refusing to applaud when Hochul raised the issue during her "State of the State" address in Albany earlier this month.
City Hall, for its part, has moved cautiously, with the mayors office stating that the administration is awaiting a formal review from the city Law Department to determine whether such buffer zones can withstand constitutional scrutiny. That legal assessment will likely focus on the First Amendment implications of restricting how close demonstrators may gather to religious buildings, an issue that has divided courts and civil-liberties advocates in other jurisdictions.
Opponents of the proposal argue that any buffer-zone regime risks becoming a tool to silence dissenting voices, particularly on hot-button issues like Israel and the Middle East. Civil-liberties critics contend that once government is allowed to push protesters back from one category of location, it becomes easier to justify similar restrictions around other politically sensitive sites.
Menin, however, insisted at a Thursday press conference that the legislation is carefully tailored to protect both free speech and physical safety, rejecting claims that it is a backdoor attempt to criminalize protest. She stressed that the "right to peacefully protest is sacrosanct" and emphasized, "It's what our country was built on," underscoring that the bill is designed to regulate proximity, not content.
"None of these bills penalize protests," Menin said, directly addressing concerns that demonstrators could face fines or arrests simply for voicing opposition near religious institutions.
"That is not what we're doing," she added, arguing that the real objective is to ensure that worshippers can enter and exit their sanctuaries without running a gauntlet of intimidation or harassment.
"What we are doing is really creating the safe perimeters that allow people to really move into their respective house of worship and schools," Menin explained, framing the measure as a basic public-safety and religious-freedom safeguard. Supporters note that conservatives have long argued for robust protection of religious exercise and the right of families to attend services and religious schools without being confronted by hostile crowds at the door.
From a law-and-order perspective, the proposal reflects a broader conservative concern that urban leaders have too often prioritized activist demands over the safety of ordinary citizens, particularly religious minorities. By giving the NYPD clear authority to establish defined perimeters, backers say, the city would be sending a message that violent rhetoric and menacing behavior near synagogues and churches will not be indulged under the guise of protest.
The debate now unfolding at City Hall will test whether New Yorks political class is willing to draw a firm line between constitutionally protected speech and targeted intimidation of faith communities.
As antisemitic incidents rise and anti-Israel demonstrations grow more confrontational, Menins bill forces lawmakers to decide whether the First Amendment truly requires worshippers to run a protest gauntlet just to practice their faith, or whether reasonable, narrowly drawn buffer zones are a legitimate tool to defend both public safety and religious liberty.
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