Lawmakers Seek to End New York’s 40-Year Bathhouse Prohibition

This story originally appeared on The Advocate.More than four decades after New York shut down adult saunas during the height of the AIDS epidemic, state lawmakers are seeking to replace what they describe as an emergency-era policy with a modern regulatory framework built around today's public health science.This week, state Sen. Erik Bottcher, a Manhattan Democrat, and Assemblymember Tony Simone introduced the Public Health Modernization Act, legislation that would repeal state regulations dating to 1985 that effectively prohibited adult saunas, often referred to as bathhouses, and require the state Department of Health to create a licensing and oversight system for their operation.For Bottcher, the legislation is less about reviving a type of business than acknowledging how dramatically HIV prevention and treatment have evolved since the fear and uncertainty of the 1980s."The science has changed. Prevention has changed. Our laws need to keep pace when the facts on the ground change," Bottcher said in an interview. "These restrictions were adopted during an extraordinary public health emergency, but emergency measures shouldn't automatically become permanent policy."Related: From trauma to triumph, will NYC Councilman Erik Bottcher become the city's first out gay mayor one day?The regulations were enacted in 1985, when little was known about HIV transmission and before the development of antiretroviral therapy, routine HIV testing, PrEP and other prevention strategies that have since reshaped the fight against the virus. The following year, New York City relied on those state regulations to close the city's bathhouses, which had long served as social spaces within the LGBTQ+ community.Bottcher said New York has become an outlier as other cities have revisited similar AIDS-era restrictions."New York is unique among major cities in not allowing these establishments," he said. "That simply doesn't make sense anymore."The proposal comes as jurisdictions around the cou