City Council passes multi-part anti-hate package, narrowly approves school-security perimeter bill

The New York City Council on March 26 advanced a multi-bill package to address rising hate incidents across the city, approving measures that range from a public bias-reporting hotline to new emergency-planning requirements for houses of worship and schools.

Speaker Julie Menon, the council’s speaker, framed the package as a response to a recent wave of attacks and vandalism: "The increase in hateful acts around the city is absolutely abhorrent and we had to do something about it," she said, citing graffiti at a Brooklyn playground and recent spikes in antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents.

The package included a bill to require the Commission on Civil and Human Rights to operate a public hotline for reporting discriminatory harassment (Intro 388a), a measure to provide emergency-planning support to religious and nonprofit institutions in consultation with the NYPD (Intro 297a), an education requirement directing…