4 June 2021: Abuse Victims Group Claims NY Speaker Heastie Protecting Cuomo

Abuse victims: Speaker Heastie stalling anti-harass laws, protecting Cuomo

The Sexual Harassment Working Group believes NY Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie is abusing his position to block consideration of new anti-sexual harassment laws and is "providing cover" to protect Governor Andrew Cuomo over his alleged sexual harassment of several women.

The Sexual Harassment Working Group sent a scathing letter to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Lavine (D-Nassau) overseeing the Cuomo impeachment inquiry, complaining about foot-dragging on a package of bills that already passed passed the Democrat-run Senate.

Members of the group are former legislative staffers sexually harassed or who witnessed abuse by late Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez and other lawmakers.

“We are very familiar with the patterns of this chamber to block, delay, and run out the clock on survivors and the legislation that would protect them as a means of providing cover for serial abusers,” the Sexual Harassment Working Group wrote Thursday.

The group also criticized the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry of Cuomo, which includes examining harassment accusations female staffers leveled against the governor.

“And even now, the chamber appears to be providing that same cover for Governor Cuomo, the Assembly is running an ill-conceived, parallel investigation into nearly a dozen reports of sexual misconduct against Governor Cuomo … By failing to pass this package of bills … the Assembly is continuing a 20-year practice of protecting abusers and the institutions that shelter them,” the group said.

The report identifies the measures they accuse NY Speaker Heastie of blocking:

On the top of the list of bills the Assembly is accused of slow-walking is the Adult Survivors Act — which the state Senate unanimously passed earlier Thursday — which would give victims who were abused when they 18 or older recourse to file civil lawsuits against their abusers. It would create a one-year look back window for survivors to file civil suits — akin to the Child Victims Act.

Another proposed law authored by state Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn) would prohibit the retaliatory disclosure of employee personnel files — in direct response to the Cuomo administration’s release of Cuomo accuser Lindsey Boylan’s personnel records. It passed the Senate unanimously.

Other measures that passed the Senate last week but still are bottled up in Assembly committee include: extending the statute of limitations to file for employment discrimination from three years to six years: ban “no rehire” clauses in settlement agreements for workers that filed a harassment claim against an employer; extending anti-discrimination protections to legislative and judicial employees under the state Human Rights law; and bar financial penalties against harassment victims who speak out after signing non-disclosure agreements;

Since these measures all passed in New York's Senate, the lack of similar movement in the Assembly points to an absence of support by Speaker Heastie and members of the Democratic party in the Assembly, because Heastie typically only advances legislation when at least 76 members of the Democratic party will vote in favor of it. With 150 seats in Assembly, that policy means only what Democrats want becomes law.