Albany, NY – On Thursday New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced leadership appointments for the beginning of the 2025 Albany Legislative Session. Speaker Heastie appointed Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas as Chair of the Task Force on Women’s Issues.

With 48 members in the Assembly being women, the Task Force now boasts the largest membership of women elected to the Assembly in New York State’s history. Almost one-third of the Assembly are members of the task force.

Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas is a longtime advocate for gender justice. Before joining the New York State Assembly, she served for 13 years in leadership positions, including Executive Director, at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, the only national reproductive justice organization that is dedicated to building Latina power to advance health, dignity, and justice for 29 million Latinas, their families, and communities in the United States.

During her tenure in the chamber, González-Rojas has successfully introduced and passed several pieces of legislation to advance protections, rights, and access to care for women across the state. The legislation she has passed and were enacted into law includes Lian’s Law, which ensured outreach and education programming on preeclampsia, legislation to improve mental health screenings for women of color, and legislation to protect workers from retaliation when they submit complaints involving unlawful discriminatory practices by employers.

The Queens lawmaker is the prime sponsor of the Universal School Meals Act, which would provide free breakfast and lunch to all students in New York. In previous years she secured $145 million to expand access to school meals to 90% of students in the state. She has attributed her focus on the legislation to being a public school mom and will be prioritizing securing the remainder of funding to achieve universal school meals in this year’s budget.

As a parent González-Rojas has also committed time to amplifying the concerns of mothers. She and Assembly Member Sarah Clark have formed an unofficial “Mom Squad” with other mothers in the legislature to push back on budget cuts to schools, advocate for the passage of legislation for child care access, and more.

Assembly Member González-Rojas plans to start holding regular meetings of the task force soon to form a package of legislative priorities on gender justice. She is the Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Trafficking. She represents parts of the communities of Astoria, Corona, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside in Queens County in the State Assembly.

Quotes:

“I have dedicated my career to advancing gender, racial, and economic equity for all women, trans and gender expansive communities. I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues to establish budget and legislative priorities for this legislative session and thank Speaker Heastie for entrusting me with this leadership role. In the face of a Donald Trump presidency we must be even more bold than we have already been and fight for universal access to basic needs that make it easier for all to live and thrive in our state. I’m excited and ready to get to work” said Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas.