Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 13, 1993 TAG: 9312130111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
Five-year-olds no longer may be barred from the city's museums because they might break rare artifacts or leave sticky fingerprints on priceless masterpieces.
Children under 12 no longer may be forbidden to visit hospital wards because they might carry infectious diseases or run, shout and perhaps unplug someone's life-support system.
Teen-agers no longer may be thrown out of stores or singled out as potential shoplifters.
New York will become the first city in the nation to attack discrimination against the young in public places - violators face up to a $100,000 fine - and Human Rights Commission Chairman Dennis deLeon says it's high time.
"In many urban centers, there really is an unfriendly attitude toward families and young people who don't fit in the yuppie singles scene," DeLeon said. "The bottom line is, movie theaters and museums and restaurants can exclude people who are disruptive, but they have got to start looking at young people as individuals as opposed to as a group."
A group of 24 "youth commissioners" in their teens and 20s were named last year to help draft the new law. For two of them, the measure amounts to personal victory.
Fourteen years ago, Anna Maria Nieves was barred from seeing her father as he lay in a Bronx hospital awaiting a heart transplant. She was 8 and the hospital refused to allow children under 12 in the wards.
"That same night, my father almost died," recalled Nieves, now 22. "This angered me so much that I said something has to be done; there has to be a law; this is not humane."
A few years ago Ralph Bryant went shopping with an older female friend.
Though no one barred him at the door, which he says is a common practice, as they left the store, a malfunction set off the shoplifting alarm, summoning a squad of security people.
"They frisked me - patted me down, emptied all my shopping bags - but they didn't even question her," said Bryant, now 23. "What really tore it was, a few days later I went back to the store and the person who searched me pulled me aside and told me not to `try anything funny' because he would be watching me."
DeLeon says age discrimination, including outright bans on shoppers under age 18 unless accompanied by an adult, happens a lot in New York.
"Macy's does that, and Century 21," DeLeon said. "They will not let younger people in at all. I think it's true that many of the shoplifters are young people, but not every young person does that. You can't just say all young people should be excluded. It's really an anti-family kind of position."
Neither Macy's nor Century 21 returned phone calls, but it is reported both department stores plan formal objections to the law.
DeLeon says restaurants are going to have to change their ways. However, federal and state statutes restricting access to bars and R-rated movies remain in place.
"The Upper West Side of Manhattan is filled with restaurants where you come in and you have a child with you, and they treat you like you're from Mars," he said.
Even babies first will have to be allowed to cry - in restaurants or theaters - before they and their parents can be asked to leave. Bill Kartozian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, calls that provision "after the fact" in an industry that routinely excludes children under 3.
Anyone objecting to the new regulations will be told to file for an exemption and make the case that to comply will endanger the public health and safety. That may be difficult for restaurants, stores and theaters to prove, but not even hospitals are going to find it easy.
Susan Waltman, senior vice president and general counsel for the Greater New York Hospital Association, says she has been meeting with the Youth Commission and will file for an exemption.
"We'll be asking that health considerations be taken into account, but at the same time, we'll be asking our own members to be flexible and permit visitation when it seems appropriate from an infection control standpoint," Waltman said.
"They [the youth commissioners] are very opposed to any policy where children ages 12 to 16 must have parental supervision before they can come in [to visit someone in a hospital]. They object categorically to that."
Cheryl Deleaver-Notice, the youth commission director, scoffs at the argument that children, many of whom now are immunized by age 8, should be banned from hospital wards because they might carry infectious diseases.
"We now have people coming from Bosnia, parts of Africa and other underdeveloped countries who are not properly immunized, but they're all over the age of 16, so they get to go upstairs and give everybody tuberculosis," she said.
"The commissioner will consider a number of issues before he makes a determination on an exemption, but we're not going to be doing any kind of compromise on discrimination," Deleaver-Notice said. "Discrimination is something you just don't negotiate."
Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
by CNB