State Civil Rights Law
New York would clarify the right to breastfeed
The bill rewrites state civil rights law in gender-neutral terms and keeps the protection in any public or private place where a person is otherwise allowed to be.
New York would restate its breastfeeding-rights law so it uses person and their instead of mother and her. The change says people may breastfeed in any public or private place where they are otherwise allowed to be, whether or not the nipple is covered.
- Breastfeeding would stay protected in public and private places.
- The law would use gender-neutral wording: person and their.
- Section 79-e of New York’s civil rights law is being amended.
- The protection applies whether or not the nipple is covered.
- The act would take effect immediately.
In New York, breastfeeding would be protected in any public or private place where a person is otherwise allowed to be. The change rewrites Section 79-e of the civil rights law in direct language, so the right is easier to read at a glance.
The proposal also replaces mother and her with person and their, making clear that the protection is not limited by wording that assumes only one kind of parent. It would still cover breastfeeding whether or not the nipple is covered during or incidental to the act.
A right written to fit more people
The point of the rewrite is not to create a new right or carve out a new exception. It is to restate an existing protection so the law says plainly that a person may breastfeed their baby in any location, public or private, where they are otherwise authorized to be.
That matters because legal language can shape how ordinary people understand their own rights. Here, the state is choosing wording that leaves less room for confusion and less room for someone to read the statute as narrower than it is.
The spaces it reaches
The protection would apply in the places families actually move through every day, from stores and waiting rooms to homes and other private settings, as long as the person is otherwise allowed to be there. The law does not turn that into a special permission slip. It simply confirms that breastfeeding is protected there too.
The act would take effect immediately.