In our written testimony, submitted to the New York City Council’s Committee on Civil and Human Rights, we advocate to increase the budget of the New York City Commission on Human Rights (“CCHR” or “Commission”). An increased budget will equip the Commission to:

(1) recover from years of underinvestment and to eliminate the resulting backlog;

(2) effectively carry out its growing mandate over a more comprehensive set of anti-discrimination laws;

(3) step up to provide much needed relief at the local level in light of the rapid dismantling and distortion of federal anti-discrimination protections.