About Jo Anne
Jo Anne is a disability civil rights lawyer, a former teacher of deaf students, and a community activist. She was first elected to represent the 52nd Assembly District in 2014 and has fought tirelessly for her constituents and New Yorkers.
Jo Anne grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Yonkers, NY. She learned early from her mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, and her father, the value of family, commitment, and respect for others.
She was the first person in her family to graduate from college. She graduated from Iona College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Sciences, Gallaudet University with a Master’s Degree in Education of the Deaf, and Fordham University School of Law, where she earned her law degree at night while working full-time.
Jo Anne opened a disability civil rights law firm in Downtown Brooklyn and taught as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School for nearly 20 years. Jo Anne is a nationally recognized expert in her field, and her work has been featured in the New York and National Law Journals. She has protected people from discrimination, and she won a landmark disability rights case that went up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
She is not just a politician, she’s a longtime community activist. Jo Anne has earned a reputation as an effective community leader and activist. She has championed civic engagement. She fought for affordable housing in local development projects, and her community planning led to 37.5% low-to-moderate-income housing in Boerum Hill. She championed safer streets, spearheading the coalition that secured NYC’s first traffic calming study. Jo Anne has fiercely advocated for cleaning up the polluted Gowanus Canal and delivering affordable housing at Atlantic Yards.
She served as President of the Boerum Hill Association and chaired its Traffic & Transportation, Land Use, and Atlantic Yards committees. She was a founder or co-founder of numerous community-based organizations advocating for progressive, environmentally just, and sustainable solutions to transportation and land use projects, including advocacy for parks and open spaces.
In the Assembly, she has passed groundbreaking legislation on campaign finance reform, gender equity, public transit, and education. Her efforts have helped lead to equal pay for equal work, voting rights, paid family leave, and NY’s Green New Deal. As a former abortion counselor, she even helped codify abortion rights into NYS law.
She doesn’t hesitate to stand up to bullies. She fought the fossil fuel industry to save New Yorkers $600 million a year on their utility bills, earning her the NY’s League of Conservation Voters Climate Champion award. She also just secured a victory to fund education aid for students in foster care and students living in shelters. She helped enact an expansion to the rent freeze program for seniors and people with disabilities.
She won authorization for design-build procurement in 2018 to save time and money for repairs to the BQE. Jo Anne passed a first-in-the-nation “weigh in motion” law to issue automated violations to overweight trucks on the BQE. She passed a dyslexia law to ensure that more children can learn to read. She also hosts an annual Dyslexia Advocacy Day in Albany. Jo Anne passed a “gender neutral” language law so that female firefighters and police officers can expand their ranks. She also passed a campaign finance law in 2019, closing the infamous “LLC Loophole.”
Jo Anne’s work to prevent gun violence is unparalleled. She passed the nation’s strongest “Red Flag Law” and other laws to get guns off the streets. It earned her an “F” from the NRA, but it’s so effective that it’s been a model for the country. Jo Anne also passed a law to create a Firearm Violence Research Institute and to prevent handguns from being easily and cheaply converted into illegal semi-automatic machine guns.
She also served as one of the Democratic District Leaders for the 52nd Assembly District for a decade. Jo Anne has always stood up for her constituents and put principle over politics. She was a forceful leader in ending party boss Vito Lopez’s politics as usual in the Brooklyn Democratic Party. In 2012, she was at the forefront of the effort to force Lopez from office and adopt a series of long-overdue reforms to open up the Kings County Democratic Committee. She is a co-founder of the NY State Democratic Committee’s Progressive Caucus and a member of theIndependent Neighborhood Democrats, Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, and 504 Democrats.
Jo Anne and her husband, Bill Harris, live in Boerum Hill.