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Local Civil Rights Restoration Act of 2005

The Local Civil Rights Restoration Act (Local Law 85 of 2005) was passed to protect the vigor and independence of the City’s Human Rights Law against the attacks of an increasingly conservative state and federal judiciary. The bill -- known as "Intro 22" as it wended its way through the Council -- simultaneously sent a strong message about the City’s commitment to the preservation of civil rights and took practical and concrete steps to improve the efficacy of civil rights enforcement.

Comprehensive 1991 Amendments

Local Law 39 of 1991 was a comprehensive set of amendments to the New York City Human Rights Law.

These amendments were intended to maximize both individual and vicarious responsibility for discriminatory conduct, and substantially expanded the reach of the law, the tools for enforcing it, and the penalties for violating it.

Unfortunately, despite the command in the legislative history to interpret the law independently from state and federal civil rights enactments, judges continued to treat the City Human Rights Law as nothing more than a carbon copy of its state and federal counterparts.

As stated in the Committee Report accompanying the Restoration Act, that 2005 measure "aim[ed] to ensure construction of the City's human rights law in line with the purposes of fundamental amendments to the law enacted in 1991."  As such, it is essential to understand the sea change that the comprehensive 1991 amendments were intended to produce.