US News: New York considers scrapping century-old law banning cheating
A US state is considering repealing a law that dates back a century and criminalizes cheating.
Adultery has been classified as a minor criminal offense, known as a misdemeanor, in New York since 1907.
These laws were historically implemented in states across the US to reduce the number of divorces at a time when infidelity was the only means of obtaining a legal separation.
However, very few individuals have been charged in New York since 1972, with the last case being over a decade ago.
Out of those cases, only five have resulted in convictions, according to New York assemblyman Charles Lavine, who has introduced a bill to abolish the rarely utilized law.
“It’s completely nonsensical, and we’ve progressed significantly since intimate relationships between consenting adults were considered immoral,” he stated.
“It’s absurd. This law was simply an expression of someone’s moral outrage.”
New York state assemblyman, Charles Lavine. File pic: AP
Katharine Silbaugh, a law professor at Boston University and co-author of the book “A Guide to America’s Sex Laws”, suggested that adultery bans were intended to punish women.
“Let’s just say this: patriarchy,” she remarked.
The bill to eliminate the adultery ban has already been passed by the state assembly and is expected to soon be approved by the state senate, before proceeding to the governor’s office for a signature.
How the law has been used since its creation
Shortly after the law took effect in 1907, a married man and a 25-year-old woman were the first individuals arrested following a divorce lawsuit filed by the man’s wife, as reported in a New York Times article of the time.
The most recent adultery charge in New York seems to have been in 2010 against a woman caught engaging in a sexual act in a public park.
However, the case was later dismissed as part of a plea agreement.
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The law nearly faced repeal in the 1960s after a committee assigned to update New York’s criminal laws found the adultery prohibition to be practically unenforceable.
However, despite initially accepting the proposal, the state assembly reinstated it after a politician argued that scrapping the law could imply that the state condoned infidelity, as per a New York Times article from 1965.
Most states in the US that still retain adultery laws categorize them as misdemeanors—an offense of low severity.
However, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Michigan treat adultery as a much more serious offense, known as a felony.
Several states, including Colorado and New Hampshire, have moved to revoke their adultery laws using similar arguments to those being employed in New York.
