Mamdani rejects bill involving police at school protests

New York: Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Friday that he would veto a City Council bill that would have required the New York Police Department to publicise plans to deploy security perimeters around educational facilities during protests.

In his veto message, Mamdani said he believed the bill could be improperly applied to “workers protesting ICE, or college students demanding their school divest from fossil fuels or demonstrating in support of Palestinian rights.”

The bill “is not a narrow public safety measure; it is a piece of legislation that has alarmed much of the labor movement, reproductive rights groups, and immigration advocates, among others, across this city,” he said in a statement. “Nearly a dozen unions have raised the alarm about its impact on their ability to organize. That is why I am vetoing this legislation.”

The veto, which is Mamdani’s first as mayor, was another sign of the growing tension between the council and City Hall early in the mayor’s tenure. The council speaker, Julie Menin, is seriously considering whipping enough votes to override Mamdani’s veto, according to two people familiar with her plans. The bill passed four votes short of a veto-proof majority.

“Ensuring students can enter and exit their schools without fear of harassment or intimidation should not be controversial,” Menin said. “This bill simply requires the NYPD to clearly outline how it will ensure safe access when there are threats of obstruction or physical injury, while fully protecting First Amendment rights.”

The relationship between the city’s leading Democrats has become tumultuous, with Menin appearing eager to position herself as a Democratic counterweight to Mamdani, and the mayor cutting a video to take shots at her response to his proposed budget.

Things appeared to thaw when Menin opted to back his pick to lead the Department of Investigation, an appointment that needs council approval. And on Thursday evening, the two had dinner to discuss his pending veto and other matters.

But the issue of buffer zones, sparked after a protest outside a synagogue last fall, highlights one of their central points of disagreement: How to handle criticism of Israel that some people believe bleeds into antisemitism but others see as legitimate concerns about the military actions of a government that some experts have likened to genocide.

In response to Mamdani’s veto, council member Eric Dinowitz, who sponsored the bill, suggested that arguments against it have been made in bad faith.

“Should students be harassed on the way to school? I think the answer is no,” Dinowitz said, later adding, “There’s no text in the bill that restricts free speech.”

The bill passed last month by a vote of 30-19. It mandates that the Police Department present the mayor and speaker with a plan — which must then be posted online — to manage risks posed by protesters without infringing on their First Amendment rights. The police commissioner must also offer a public point of contact about any effort to mitigate a demonstration.

It was one of two pieces of related legislation that the council passed in March over substantial opposition from the political left.

The other bill in the package imposed similar requirements on the Police Department regarding protests outside houses of worship, but, like the vetoed bill, had been watered down from the original version introduced by Menin.

She had originally called for the police to secure a perimeter of up to 100 feet around houses of worship, citing a problematic protest outside a modern Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan last fall.

Some demonstrators gathered to protest an event hosted by the nonprofit organization Nefesh B’Nefesh, which helps North American Jews move to Israel, including to settlements in the occupied West Bank, where violence against Palestinians has been surging. The rally outside grew rowdy, with some chanting “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada.”

But Menin agreed to pare down her bill after resistance from people in Mamdani’s administration, including Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Opponents of the two bills argued that the legislation would serve only to increase the unnecessary policing of protests and stifle free speech. But the bill regarding houses of worship passed with a veto-proof majority, making it less vulnerable to the mayor’s objections.

On Friday, Mamdani said that while he remained opposed to that bill, he would neither sign nor veto it, allowing it to lapse into law.

“Following a thorough legal review, I do not believe it poses the same risks it once did, and that is why I will allow it to become law,” the mayor’s statement read. “That said, I disagree with its framing of all protest as a security concern.”

The speaker’s office argued that the two protest-related bills are similar in constitutionality, scope and language.

But Dinowitz’s legislation sparked particular ire because of its broad definition of “educational facility” to mean “any building, structure, or place where educational programming takes place.” Civil libertarians argued that definition would encompass not only schools but also hospitals and libraries, and Mamdani cited those concerns in his message about the veto.

“Sending the message to New Yorkers that we have something to worry about with regard to protest by or near schools, libraries, teaching hospitals is absolutely the wrong message for these times, especially when the Trump regime is coming at protest with a sledgehammer,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

In anticipation of Mamdani’s veto, a coalition of Jewish groups, including the UJA-Federation of New York, voiced disappointment with his expected action.

“At a time when Jewish and other communities across our city are facing heightened threats, this legislation represented a crucial step toward ensuring that every school and community institution can be better protected,” the coalition’s statement read, calling the anticipated veto “a profound failure of City Hall to demonstrate to all New Yorkers that our safety is a priority.”

As negotiations over the measure ramped up in recent weeks, a groundswell of unions, progressive Jews and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America publicly opposed the measure.

In a letter they sent to Mamdani, they specifically cited union protests as a reason to oppose the legislation, though the bill includes a clause ensuring it would not “infringe upon rights guaranteed” under labour laws.

“Potentially barring anyone who is not on strike from joining a picket line gives management even more tools to suppress worker organizing,” read the letter, signed by the city’s DSA chapter, a regional branch of the United Auto Workers and other activist groups and unions.