New York has officially repealed a 117-year-old statute that criminalized adultery. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the bill repealing the law dated November 22, 2024, thus putting to rest a statute that brought ironically quite a number of years of debate over relevance and enforcement.
When enacted in 1907, the adultery statute made extramarital affairs a misdemeanor, punishable by as much as three months in jail. Originally designed to head off divorces and foster morality, the law’s relevance had been waning steadily for years. The law hardly ever was invoked: there have been just 13 charges since 1972, and five convictions. The last documented use of the law was in 2010, although the charge was dropped later under a plea agreement.
The feeling of Hochul in repealing the law was pegged on her idea that personal relationships are complicated and ought not to have something to do with the criminal justice system. “While I’ve been fortunate to share a loving married life with my husband for 40 years-making it somewhat ironic for me to sign a bill decriminalizing adultery-I know that people often have complex relationships,” Hochul said. “These matters clearly ought to be left to the individual and not to the criminal justice system. Let’s finally take this silly, antiquated statute off the books.”.
Her decision also reflects changes in the broader society, as many increasingly realize that it’s about time these laws on personal affairs were left to the history books.
The repeal was sponsored by Assemblyman Charles Lavine, who spearheaded the cause in New York’s legislature. In truth, this bill showed near unanimous support; there seemed to have been little contention that, at minimum, reform was due. It wasn’t the first effort to repeal the law, though-a state commission recommended its removal 60 years after it became law, but the proposal never made it through. More recently, in 2020, former Assemblyman Dan Quart introduced a similar bill, though it stalled before his departure from office.
But the persistence of Lavine paid off finally this year, after decades of trying to drag New York’s legal framework into modernity.
By dismissing the case, New York joined most of the the other states, although the infidelity remains a criminal offense in 16 other states. Punishment can range from just fines to significant times behind the bars. In Florida, adultery is a possible sentence of up to 60 days in jail and a fine of $500. In Illinois, the laws characterize adultery as a Class A misdemeanor, which carries penalties as much as a year in jail and fines of up to $2,500. On the other hand, some states, such as California, have entirely decriminalized adultery by adopting no-fault divorce laws that do not consider marital misconduct during legal proceedings.
Besides, the repeal in New York coincided with a national trend of decriminalization of personal issues and actual retreat by the government from interference in the private lives of individuals. Such a shift takes modern relationships and their complexity into cognizance and argues for an increasingly liberated approach to personal freedoms.
