Legislative Action

One of SEEK’s keystone initiatives is advocating for self-help consumer protection legislation. The self-help industry is fractured and unregulated. There is no licensing body or professional organization to ensure that providers in the industry are operating with basic standards, or to step in when self-help practitioners have harmed customers. We need regulations to create some level of consumer safety and practitioner accountability.

SEEK has been working with legislators in New York to address these issues and we’ve made great progress. We are currently working with Senator Skoufis to pass Bill S1155 and Assemblywoman Levenberg to pass Bill A4166.

This legislation will be GROUNDBREAKING, as the first of its kind in the US. It will provide a roadmap for other states to pass their own self-help consumer protection legislation.

Here are some of the highlights of this bill as it stands now:

self-help practitioners must provide their customers with a copy of their “bill of rights”
self-help practitioners must clearly outline any potential risks to the emotional or physical well-being of their customers
self-help practitioners must outline their risk management plan, including emergency medical assistance
self-help practitioners cannot use misleading marketing to promote their services

Our Senate sponsor, James Skoufis, summed it up nicely in his message for our 2021 Kirby Jam.

We believe these steps will go a long way to making self-help events safer for consumers and giving consumers more information about the services in which they are investing their time, money, and energy.

For more information, read the briefing note we created to inform legislators about the bill.

Read the Bill itself and click “aye” to support it if you’re a NY State resident. See instructions below:

Watch our interview with the bill’s original Assembly sponsor, Sandy Galef, below, or our discussion about this effort from our Virtual Kirby Jam on December 4, 2020.

We will need help when it comes time to vote for the bill. More info on that to come, but in the meantime, you can always contact your representatives (if you are a NY state resident) to encourage them to support this effort.

Thanks for all your help and support!