Most of GENY’s early legislative advocacy was spent attempting to pass the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, better known as GENDA, which was finally passed on the third day of the 2019 Legislative Session! After sixteen years of demonstrations; TV, radio, and newspaper interviews; public sign-on letters; and hundreds of meetings with state Assembly Members, Senators and their staffs; our community was finally given an explicit statewide law which prohibits discrimination against transgender and non-binary New Yorkers.    

In the final days of the 2019 NYS Legislative Session, we visited 105 Assembly offices to ensure passage of the “Gay & Trans Panic Defense Ban“, which was passed on the last day of the session. This legislation prevented the use of a legal courtroom defense that was employed against charges of assault, manslaughter, or murder. Prior to the passage, if someone violently attacked or murdered an LGBTQ person, New York State law allowed them to blame their actions on the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity to reduce the sentence for their crime. The strategy looked to reduce the defendant’s criminal liability and sentencing by tapping into deep-seated biases against and stereotypes about gays and transgender people as deviant sexual predators.