New York on Friday repealed a rarely used, more than century-old law that made adultery a misdemeanor that could carry a three-month prison sentence.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill repealing the 1907 law that had long been considered outdated and difficult to enforce.
“While I have been fortunate to share a loving marriage with my husband for 40 years, which makes it somewhat ironic for me to sign a bill that decriminalizes adultery, I know that people often have complicated relationships,” she said.
“Clearly, these are matters that should be dealt with by these individuals, not our criminal justice system. Let’s get this ridiculous, outdated law off the books, once and for all.”
The adultery ban is actually the law in many states and was enacted to make it more difficult to get a divorce at a time when proving a spouse cheated was the only way to get a legal separation.
Charges have been rare and convictions even rarer. Some states have moved to repeal adultery laws in recent years.
New York defines adultery as when “a person engages in sexual intercourse with another person while he or she has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse.”
The state’s law was first used a few weeks after it went into effect, according to a New York Times article, to arrest a married man and a 25-year-old woman.
State Assemblyman Charles Lavine, the bill’s sponsor, said about a dozen people have been charged under the law since the 1970s, and only five of those cases have resulted in convictions.
The laws are meant to protect our community and serve as a deterrent to antisocial behavior, Lavine said in a statement Friday.
The state law appears to have been last used in 2010, against a woman who was caught having sex in a park, but the adultery charge was later dropped as part of a plea deal.
New York came close to repealing the law in the 1960s after a state commission tasked with evaluating the penal code said it was nearly impossible to enforce.
At the time, lawmakers were initially in favor of repealing it, but eventually decided to keep it after one politician argued that repealing it would make it seem like the state was officially endorsing adultery, according to a 1965 New York Times article.
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