Assemblymember Weinstein, soon to retire, remembered as pioneer in women’s politics

March 14, 2024 Raanan Geberer

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks with Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein, D-Brooklyn, before giving testimony during a joint legislative budget hearing on local government on Feb. 5, 2018, in Albany. AP Photo/Hans Pennink

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Assemblymember Helene Weinstein, who recently announced her registration after serving in the state Assembly since 1980, was both the longest-serving member in the history of the Assembly and the first woman to serve on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Ways and Means Committee.

She represents the heavily Democratic 41st District, encompassing Sheepshead Bay, Flatlands, Canarsie, Midwood and East Flatbush. When she began her tenure, these neighborhoods were mainly populated by Brooklyn’s traditional Italian American and Jewish American residents, most of whom had been in the borough for several generations.

Nowadays, the district consists of a mixture of Africans American, Caribbean Americans, Orthodox Jews, Russian Americans and Asian Americans — many of them immigrants.

A 2015 profile in the Eagle by Paula Katinas revealed that Weinstein has a collection of more than 100 framed pens in her district office on Nostrand Avenue. These pens were used by governors to sign into law bills that Weinstein had sponsored. Each governor, upon signing the bill, would give Weinstein the pen.

In the same article, Weinstein was quoted as saying she feels lucky that her district is heavily Democratic in terms of voter turnout. That isn’t the case for many of her colleagues, she acknowledged. “As soon as they get elected, they have to figure out how to get re-elected,” she said.

Weinstein grew up in the area and went to Canarsie High School. Her father, Murray, was an attorney, civic leader and president of a local synagogue.

She later received a BA in economics from American University in Washington, D.C. and a J.D. degree from the New England School of Law. When she was elected to the Assembly, she was one of only five women elected that year and the only one who was a lawyer.

At the time, she told the Eagle, many assemblymembers considered serving in the Assembly a part-time job, but she considered it full-time right from the get-go.

In recent years, one of the main issues Weinstein has worked on is that of home foreclosures.

“Right now, we’re working on ways to help people who are facing foreclosure. Some people had their homes foreclosed because of faulty paperwork. We have really cleaned up a lot of that,” she said in an interview with the Eagle. “Some people just need a little bit of help to stay in their homes.”

In 2022, she sponsored a bill that took aim at a February 2021 decision of the New York Court of Appeals that reopened hundreds of foreclosure cases that homeowners thought they had won because lenders missed a key deadline.

In that case, known as Freedom Mortgage Corporation v. Engel, the court ruled that lenders could proceed with foreclosures nonetheless — and even revive dormant cases. The mortgage industry opposed the bill, but groups such as Legal Services NYC and the Community Service Society were in favor of it.

“If Engel is permitted to stand, lenders will get multiple bites of the foreclosure apple,” Assemblymember Weinstein said at the time. Finally, in February 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill overturning the Engel decision.

In other issues, Assemblymember Weinstein sponsored the Family Protection and Domestic Violence Act of 1994, the Child Support Standards Act, and a law that required judges to consider histories of domestic violence in child custody and visitation cases. More locally, she secured money for the Flatlands and Kings Highway branches of Brooklyn Public Library

Some issues, she told the Eagle, are more difficult, such as gun control. “There is an upstate-downstate divide on this issue,” she said.

The Brooklyn Democratic Party, under the leadership of Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, recently put out a statement on Assemblymember Weinstein’s retirement. It reads, in part:

“The Brooklyn Democratic Party is deeply appreciative and thankful for Assemblymember Weinstein’s selfless and steadfast service, and although she will be missed in the legislature, we look forward to working with Weinstein as she starts a new great chapter in life.

“Weinstein was the first woman to head the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee and then became the first female chair of the Ways and Means Committee—and her barrier-breaking legacy will continue to positively impact us and inspire women and girls everywhere.”