ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

New York Finally Gets Rid of ‘Walking While Trans’ Ban After Decades of Discrimination

The 1976 anti-prostitution statute led to decades of police discrimination and profiling against trans people of color.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has officially repealed a controversial statute that became known as the “walking while trans” ban. The 1976 penal law statute was supposedly designed to stop people from hanging around on the streets for the purpose of prostitution, but in practice it led to decades of police discrimination against transgender people. The statute allowed police to “stop-and-frisk trans women of color and other marginalized groups for simply walking down the street,” said state Sen. Brad Hoylman, who co-sponsored the bill to repeal the statute. According to CNN, city arrest stats show that, between 2012 to 2015, 85 percent of people arrested under the penal law were Black or Latinx, and officers have openly admitted that trans people were profiled. After signing the repeal, Cuomo said in a statement: “Repealing the archaic ‘walking while trans’ ban is a critical step toward reforming our policing system.”