Walk a block in Midtown, and you can get your palm read, your tarot cards pulled, or your past life revealed for a few hundred dollars. Under a 59-year-old law, each of those transactions could be a crime unless the psychic discloses that the services are for entertainment. Now, a state assembly member wants to repeal the law, arguing it’s discriminatory and violates the First Amendment.
Assembly member Charles D. Lavine’s bill would strike a statute he says was written to target Romani Americans and preserved through a 1967 revision rooted in racial stereotypes. He says what remains on the books is a tool with a discriminatory history and little legitimate use.
“As I understand it, this law was passed to curtail the enterprises that Romani people and other immigrant communities engaged in,” Lavine said. “It was the old world, but some of the customs of the old world have managed to survive here in the so-called new world.” According to Lavine, the law’s exception for entertainment was added to protect it from free-speech challenges.
“This is an ancient spiritual practice that has been both a cultural tradition and a survival trade,” said Jezmina Von Thiele, a queer American Romani fortune teller who worked in New York City for five years. “Labeling it as entertainment makes us more susceptible to stigma, and it also changes the way people treat us,” she said.
Dalen Wakeley-Smith, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, whose research focuses on American Roma history, said the law’s 1967 revision followed decades of the New York Police Department using racial stereotypes “that equate Roma with disorder or dirtiness or deviance” as a pretext for targeting American Romani women. The law became “a rationale to further police them,” he said.
In recent years, a handful of arrests made against New York City psychics have received public attention. In 2025, Midtown psychic Pamela Ufie faced grand larceny and fraudulent accosting charges after collecting $87,000 from a woman for materials to lift a “generational curse” on her son. Ufie pleaded guilty to misdemeanor petit larceny in March 2026 and received a one-year conditional discharge with $42,000 in restitution, according to court records.
Lavine said existing theft and larceny laws sufficiently address cases in which fortune tellers fraudulently obtain money from clients. He said that repealing the rarely enforced statute would prevent misuse.
“I think it is time that Americans of good faith, who believe in law and believe in justice, reevaluate any number of laws we have that can be manipulated for the worst of purposes,” he said.
Bob Nygaard, a Florida-based private investigator and retired New York City Transit police officer, said repealing the statute without a replacement is a “dangerous mistake” that would leave victims unprotected. Nygaard has worked on more than 75 cases involving psychics. He said he conducted four separate investigations into Ufie that led to her arrest.
Nygaard said larceny laws don’t cover every situation. He said he used AI to help draft a replacement statute that “does not punish someone that is doing tarot cards and makes $50,” but would allow authorities to intervene before victims lose large sums of money.
Von Thiele cautioned against equating high fees with fraud. She said pressure to keep fees low leaves Romani practitioners impoverished, and undervalues the expertise many have developed since childhood. She added that white practitioners with less experience often charge more without attracting suspicion.
“Scamming exists within our industry like it does in every industry,” she said. “Even when people are not Roma, and they’re doing these scams, we are still blamed for it.”
While living in New York, Von Thiele taught Romani literature, arts, and culture in middle schools and colleges. Anti-Romani discrimination, she said, pushed her toward fortune telling as her primary work. Although she encountered no legal trouble, she kept her business discreet. She used a different name, arranged readings through social media, and often worked at nightclubs and private parties, sometimes in situations where she felt unsafe.
“The stigma around our work makes it difficult to operate with a lot of safety and security, but especially in states where it’s illegal, it’s doubly hard,” Von Thiele said.
For her, Lavine’s effort to repeal New York’s criminal fortunetelling statute is meaningful. “He is explicitly addressing the centuries of anti-Romani racism. That feels profound.”
The bill remains in committee. Lavine said he expects it to be considered in the spring.