N.Y. Repeals Law That Critics Say Criminalized 'Walking While Trans'

[Celerity]

The anti-loitering law was designed to discourage street prostitution, but was viewed by L.G.B.T.Q. advocates as a cudgel to harass transgender people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/nyregion/walking-while-trans-ban.html

ALBANY, N.Y. — For decades, a state loitering law, originally designed to discourage street prostitution, was interpreted far more broadly, resulting in what civil rights advocates said was a pattern of police harassment of anyone who they viewed as looking different or suspicious.

In more recent years, as the law became the target of lawsuits and legislative efforts to have it repealed, it became known by a shorthand description: the “walking while trans” law. On Tuesday, the law was repealed by legislators in Albany and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, marking another victory for both the state’s progressive movement and its L.G.B.T.Q. community, which argued the law had been used to justify arrests of trans people.

“This represents one of the last frontiers of the L.G.B.T.Q. civil rights movement that went unaddressed: transgender human rights,” said Brad Hoylman, the Democratic state senator who sponsored the bill in that chamber. “This legislation goes deep into a community that has lived in the shadows of the movement.”

The repeal comes in the wake of the 2019 passage of legislation that prohibited discrimination based on “gender identity or expression” and banned so-called conversion therapy.

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[J Magarac]

1. Excellent, but also ...

"Street prostitution" (is that an official legal term?) is seriously hazardous work. Doubly so for trans woman.

Ending cop harassment is only half a loaf.