Support for the Promoting Pre-Trial Stability Act

SUMMARY

In a July 2026 report, the Civil Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association endorsed the Promoting Pre-Trial (“PromPT”) Stability Act, A.6455 (AM Septimo) / S.6271-A (Sen. Ramos), which would amend the Criminal Procedure Law to codify a uniform process for prompt hearings when a temporary order of protection issued in criminal court substantially interferes with a person’s housing, employment, family relationships, or education.

Full stay-away temporary orders of protection are often issued at arraignment based on limited information and can remain in place for months or years, excluding people from their homes, workplaces, and children before any adjudication of guilt. The First Department’s decision in Matter of Crawford v. Ally, 197 A.D.3d 27 (1st Dep’t 2021), held that courts should conduct a prompt evidentiary hearing where a temporary order of protection may cause an immediate and significant deprivation of a substantial personal or property interest — but Crawford created no statutory framework, and its implementation has been uneven across courts.

The report argues that the PromPT Stability Act closes that gap while preserving judicial discretion: it would not vacate existing orders, prevent prosecutors from requesting them, or restrict courts from issuing protective orders where necessary. The report addresses due process concerns, survivor autonomy, and the disproportionate impact of reflexive order practice on low-income New Yorkers, immigrants, young people, LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, and criminalized survivors.

BILL INFORMATION

A.6455 (AM Septimo) / S.6271-A (Sen. Ramos) – Grants superior court judges the authority to issue a temporary order of protection when an action is pending in a local criminal court (NYS 2026)

REPORT

REPORT ON LEGISLATION BY THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMITTEE

A.6455 (M. of A. Septimo)
S.6271-A (Sen. Ramos)

AN ACT to amend the criminal procedure law, in relation to the issuance of temporary orders of protection when an action is pending in a local criminal court

Promoting Pre-Trial Stability Act

THIS BILL IS APPROVED

The Civil Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association supports the Promoting Pre-Trial (“PromPT”) Stability Act, A.6455 (AM Septimo) / S.6271-A (Sen. Ramos), which would codify a uniform process for prompt hearings when temporary orders of protection (“TOPs”) issued in criminal court substantially interfere with a person’s housing, employment, family relationships, education, or other significant interests.

Temporary orders of protection can serve an important safety function. In appropriate cases, courts must be able to issue orders that protect complaining witnesses and survivors from harm. But under current practice, full stay-away TOPs are often issued at arraignment based on limited information, before meaningful factual development, and without a clear process for either the accused person or the protected party to be heard. These orders can remain in place for months or even years while a criminal case proceeds. For vulnerable populations, including criminalized survivors, young people, non-citizens, and low-income New Yorkers, this is enough time to destabilize their lives.

The PromPT Stability Act responds to that problem in a measured way. It does not eliminate TOPs. It does not prevent prosecutors from requesting them. It does not restrict courts from issuing or maintaining protective orders when they are necessary. Rather, the bill creates a prompt hearing process so courts can determine, based on a fuller record, whether a full stay-away order is necessary and whether it should be tailored to the circumstances of the case.

I.  BACKGROUND

In criminal court arraignments across New York State, judges frequently issue full temporary orders of protection in cases involving a complaining witness as a matter of course. These orders may require the accused person to stay away from the protected party’s home, workplace, school, or other locations. In many cases, prosecutors request TOPs based primarily on police representations made at arraignment, before the facts have been meaningfully tested and before the court has heard from the people most directly affected.

The consequences can be severe.^[1] A full stay-away TOP may exclude a person from their home if they live with, or even in the same building as, the protected party. It may prevent a person from going to work if the parties share a workplace. It may also separate parents from children or prevent young people from returning home. These orders can also interfere with school attendance, college admissions, and participation in campus activities.^[2] For non-citizens, the existence of a TOP can create immigration consequences even where the underlying criminal case is later dismissed.^[3]

These harms fall especially heavily on people already vulnerable to housing instability, family separation, criminalization, and immigration enforcement. Low-income New Yorkers, public housing residents, immigrants, young people, LGBTQ+ people, and survivors of violence who are themselves arrested may experience a TOP not as a temporary procedural order, but as a destabilizing event that alters housing, employment, family, and safety.

For New York City Housing Authority tenants and other families in shared housing, the consequences can be particularly acute. A person excluded from their residence may have nowhere else to go. This could cause a family to face eviction pressure or lease complications.^[4] Parents may be forced to enforce a TOP against their own children, even when they do not want the order and believe reconciliation or a different safety plan would better serve the family. These outcomes do not necessarily make anyone safer, and they can create instability.

These realities are concentrated in low-income communities that already lack resources. As a result, these orders can fuel interlocking cycles of poverty and criminalization.^[5]

II.  THE STATE OF THE LAW AFTER MATTER OF CRAWFORD V. ALLY

In Matter of Crawford v. Ally, 197 A.D.3d 27 (1st Dep’t 2021),^[6] the First Department recognized how TOPs can impose immediate and serious deprivations of liberty and property interests. There, Shamika Crawford, who had filed more than a dozen domestic incident reports against her partner, had the system weaponized against her. While Ms. Crawford’s attorney tried to make a record that Ms. Crawford was the survivor, rather than the perpetrator, the Bronx Criminal Court issued a full order of protection against Ms. Crawford without giving her a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Her case was dismissed 88 days later, but those three months adversely impacted Ms. Crawford’s employment, housing, and access to her children. Ultimately, the First Department held that when an accused person shows that a TOP may cause an “immediate and significant deprivation of a substantial personal or property interest,” the criminal court should conduct a prompt evidentiary hearing.

Crawford was an important decision. It recognized that orders issued at arraignment can do far more than regulate contact. They can remove people from their homes, separate them from their children, and interfere with employment, education, and stability before any adjudication of guilt. The decision also recognized that ordinary appellate review is often inadequate because TOPs are temporary and may expire before an appeal can be resolved.

But Crawford did not create a comprehensive statutory framework. As a result, its implementation has been uneven. Courts have differed on when hearings are required, how quickly they must occur, what evidence may be considered, and how much factual inquiry is necessary before maintaining a full stay-away order. Some courts have applied Crawford narrowly, leaving people without timely review even when a TOP imposes serious hardship.^[7]

The PromPT Stability Act addresses that gap. By codifying the hearing process, the bill would bring consistency to an area of law that currently depends too heavily on courthouse practice, judicial interpretation, and geography. It would also ensure that the procedural protection recognized in Crawford is not theoretical, but available in practice when a TOP substantially affects a person’s life.

III.  DUE PROCESS AND CIVIL RIGHTS CONCERNS

The due process concern is straightforward. The State should not be able to impose serious restraints on housing, family relationships, employment, education, or movement for extended periods without a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

At arraignment, courts must often act quickly and with limited information. In some cases, temporary restrictions may be necessary. But when a full stay-away order continues beyond the immediate arraignment context and causes substantial hardship, due process requires more than reliance on untested allegations or police summaries.

A prompt hearing allows the court to ask basic but essential questions: Is a full stay-away order necessary? Are there less restrictive conditions that would address safety concerns? Does the protected party want the order? Will the order exclude someone from their home, job, school, parents, or children? Are there facts suggesting that the accused person was also a survivor, was acting in self-defense, or was misidentified as the primary aggressor?

Those questions matter. They help courts distinguish between cases where a full stay-away order is necessary and cases where a narrower order or different set of conditions would better serve safety and stability. The bill therefore promotes both due process and sound judicial decision-making.

IV.  SURVIVOR AUTONOMY AND MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES

The PromPT Stability Act is also important because current practice can undermine survivor autonomy. In many cases, prosecutors seek TOPs without meaningful consultation with the protected party. A protected party may want safety, but not exclusion from a shared home. They may want limits on contact, but not a complete bar on communication. They may depend on the accused person for childcare, housing, transportation, financial support, or immigration-related appointments. They may also fear that a rigid stay-away order will escalate conflict or create new instability.

The facts of Crawford illustrate the problem. As noted above, Shamika Crawford, a survivor of intimate partner violence, was arrested after her abusive partner called law enforcement. The resulting TOP excluded her from her own NYCHA apartment and separated her from her children for nearly three months before the case was dismissed. Her case shows how a process designed in the name of protection can, when imposed mechanically, destabilize the very people it should be helping.

These concerns are especially acute for Black and Brown women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and young people. Survivors from marginalized communities are too often criminalized when they defend themselves, resist abuse, or are perceived through biased assumptions about aggression, credibility, gender, race, or sexuality.^[8] A reflexive TOP practice can compound those harms by turning an arrest into homelessness, family separation, job loss, or exclusion from school.

LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, and particularly transgender people of color, face distinct risks in this context. In interpersonal violence and self-defense cases, transgender people may be misidentified as aggressors or treated as less credible by police and prosecutors. For LGBTQ+ people who rely on chosen family, shared housing, community networks, or affirming workplaces, a broad stay-away order can cut off essential support before the facts have been meaningfully examined.^[9]

The bill does not require protected parties to testify. Nor does it force survivors into adversarial proceedings against their wishes. It simply creates a process through which courts can hear relevant information, consider the actual circumstances of the relationship, and avoid unnecessary orders that undermine safety, autonomy, and stability.

V.  THE BILL PRESERVES JUDICIAL DISCRETION AND SAFETY

The PromPT Stability Act would not result in the automatic vacatur of TOPs. Courts would retain authority to issue and maintain full stay-away orders where they are necessary to protect the safety of a complaining witness or survivor. Prosecutors would remain free to request TOPs. Protected parties would still be able to seek civil orders of protection in Family Court where appropriate.

The bill instead ensures that, after arraignment, courts have a clear process for reviewing whether a full stay-away TOP should remain in place. That process benefits all parties. It gives judges better information. It allows for more tailored orders. It reduces the risk of unnecessary collateral consequences. And it promotes confidence that protective orders are being used carefully, not reflexively.

A more individualized process is part of safety. Orders that destabilize housing, employment, family relationships, or survivor autonomy without improving protection can make people less safe. By contrast, orders grounded in a fuller understanding of the facts are more likely to address actual risks while avoiding unnecessary harm.

VI.  CONCLUSION

The PromPT Stability Act provides a necessary procedural safeguard in an area where criminal court orders can have immediate and far-reaching civil rights consequences. By codifying prompt hearings after Crawford, the bill promotes due process, consistency, judicial accuracy, survivor autonomy, and family stability.

The legislation preserves the authority of courts to issue protective orders where needed. It simply ensures that when a TOP substantially affects a person’s home, family, work, education, or stability, there is a meaningful opportunity for review.

For these reasons, the Civil Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association supports the passage of the PromPT Stability Act, A.6455 (AM Septimo) / S.6271-A (Sen. Ramos), and urges its enactment.

Civil Rights Committee
Evan Henley, Co-Chair

July 2026