The days of harassment or firing employees for wearing a turban or hijab may soon be over in New York City.
City Council members David Weprin (D-Hollis), chair of the Council finance committee, David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights), and James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows) have come out with a package of bills in the Council to prevent hate crimes and discrimination.
The Uniformed Agencies Anti-Discrimination Act introduced by Weprin will ban discrimination in city agencies on the basis of religious headdress like the turban or hijab. The bill seeks to change the uniform code that forces employees to forgo or violate a practice of their religion.
The Anti-Hate Crimes Act, co-sponsored by Weprin, Yassky and Gennaro, seeks to help avoid the kind of backlash seen post-9/11. The city police received 103 complaints of hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims in the three months after the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Before that, there were fewer than seven hate crimes a year.
The bills are the result of the intense lobbying by the Sikh Coalition and other agencies. If passed, the bills will be the first of its kind to be instituted in the United States, the Sikh Coalition noted.
The first bill will ensure Sikhs working in city agencies will never again be forced to choose between their jobs and turbans. Two city police officers were fired in 2001 for wearing turbans. They had to fight a legal battle for three years to get reinstated. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority recently took action against Sat Hari Singh, a subway train driver, for wearing a turban.
“I do not believe it to be unreasonable to ask that city agencies respect the practices of different religions by not directing that for an employee to retain his or her job a person must forgo a religious creed and violate a religious mandate,” Weprin said.
“Discrimination and hate violence have no place in our city. We are pleased by Weprin’s initiative to ensure our city is prepared to protect our communities when disaster strikes. We are pleased with the possibility that city workers will be judged on their ability, not their religious headdress,” said Amardeep Singh, legal director at the Sikh Coalition.
The bills are being studied by a committee and will go through a hearing before it is voted upon, said Rebecca Shaffer, a spokesperson for Weprin. “We hope the bills will get enough support to pass in the Council. We have been working to introduce such a bill for quite some time,” she said.
Twelve of the Council’s 50 members have cosponsored the bills.
Another bill introduced by Yassky, the Hate Crimes Fines Act, seeks to impose civil penalties on those convicted of hate crimes in the city. A misdemeanor violation of the Hate Crimes Act of 2000 will earn a fine of $1,000 to $5,000. A felony violation will invite a fine of $10,000 to $25,000. These are in addition to jail terms for the crimes.
“All too often – even in as diverse a city as ours – New Yorkers are ridiculed, threatened and attacked for being of a certain color or faith,” Yassky said. “These are the most ignorant of crimes. As we are a city that has never turned someone away for being different, every hate crime committed in the city is a crime against our way of life.”
