New York, New York - Nearly 100 organizations are calling on New York State lawmakers to reject proposals to establish protest buffer zones outside reproductive health clinics and houses of worship.

"Our organizations are united in opposing legislative and executive proposals that seek to create demonstration-free buffer zones around places of worship and reproductive health care facilities across New York state," reads a letter sent Wednesday to Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate President Pro Tempore Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

"As free speech advocates, civil liberties and civil rights organizations, reproductive rights supporters, Jewish and Muslim groups, and immigrants' rights groups, criminal legal system reformers, public defenders, privacy advocates, and other voices, we believe such proposals are unconstitutional, unnecessary and at this moment in history, dangerous."

The letter was signed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, NYC for Abortion Rights, Equality New York, Jewish Voice for Peace-NYC, and dozens of other groups.

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Hochul has proposed a bill that would create 25-foot buffer zone around every house of worship in the state, which the signatories warned would "increase the number and intensity of encounters between civilians and overzealous law enforcement."

New York Civil Liberties Union Senior Policy Counsel Justin Harrison said, "Creating anti-speech zones to prohibit protest outside New York’s houses of worship and reproductive health clinics would trample on New Yorkers’ First Amendment rights, open the floodgates for selective and biased policing, and undermine the robust protections that already exist in New York law for anyone entering and leaving a house of worship or health clinic."

"At a time when the Trump administration is aggressively targeting, arresting, and even killing dissenters, lawmakers should not give police new ways to criminalize speech and punish protest."

Also on Wednesday, demonstrators gathered outside New York City Hall in opposition to proposed bills to create buffer zones around houses of worship and educational facilities as they went for a hearing in the City Council's Committee to Combat Hate.

City Council Speaker Julie Menin had initially backed buffer zones of up to 100 feet around houses of worship as part of her five-point plan to combat antisemitism. The latest proposal would leave the size of the zones to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

The measures come after two anti-Zionist protests outside synagogues in New York City. Last November, demonstrators gathered outside the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan after the space was rented out for an event promoting settlement in Israel and the illegally occupied West Bank.

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"As a Jewish New Yorkers, we can understand that the image of people protesting outside a synagogue can spark discomfort and even real fear, and we strongly believe that people should be able to pray and observe religious holidays without fear of harassment," Sophie Ellman-Golan, communications director at Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, said in a statement.

"But when houses of worship host non-religious political events, they are making a choice with the knowledge that they might be protested for doing so; and restricting protest is not the best interest of any New Yorkers – including Jews," Ellman-Golan added.