Before the Restoration Act, independent development of the City HRL was limited by the assumption that decisions interpreting federal law could safely be imported into local human rights law because, it was said, any broad anti-discrimination policies embodied in state or local law are "identical to those underlying the federal statutes" (McGrath, 3 NY3d at 433 [emphasis added]). If the City Council had wanted to depart from a federal doctrine, McGrath stated, it should have{**61 AD3d at 74} amended the law to rebut that doctrine specifically (id. at 433-434). The City Council responded to the premise set forth in McGrath, legislatively overruling McGrath by amending the construction provision of Administrative Code § 8-130, and putting to an end this view of the City HRL as simply mimicking its federal and state counterparts.[FN18]
By making a specific textual amendment to the construction provision (something not done in 1991), the Council formally and unequivocally rejected the assumption that the City HRL's purposes were identical to those of counterpart civil rights statutes. In its place, the Council instructed the courts—reflected in text and legislative history—that it wanted the City HRL's provisions to be construed more broadly than federal civil rights laws and the State HRL, and wanted the local law's provisions to be construed as more remedial than federal civil rights laws and the State HRL (Administrative Code § 8-130 [as amended by Local Law No. 85 [2005] § 7]).