The text of New York Civil Rights Law Article 7, Section 79-e, is as follows:

§ 79-e.  Right to breast feed. Notwithstanding any other provision of
  law, a mother may breast feed  her  baby  in  any  location,  public  or
  private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be, irrespective of
  whether  or  not  the nipple of the mother's breast is covered during or
  incidental to the breast feeding.

As you can see, this section does not itself contain any penalty. While there are penalty provisions in Article 7, they explicitly refer to other sections of the law.  The penalty provision referred to in the 1994 NYT article Lee cites looks like:

§ 83. Penalties. Any person who violates any of the provisions of this
  article  shall be guilty of a felony which shall be punishable by a fine
  of not less than one  thousand  dollars  nor  more  than  five  thousand
  dollars,  or  by  imprisonment  for a term of not less than one year nor
  more than five years, or by both such  fine  and  imprisonment,  in  the
  discretion of the court.

This section refers to violations of "this article" which is Article 8, not Article 7 of which the public breastfeeding law is a part.  This penalty section therefore does not apply to the public breastfeeding provision of Article 7.

Anyone is free to look around http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menugetf.cgi?COMMONQUERY=LAWS and look for themselves (sorry the site does not allow for a direct link to the page so you will have to put "breast-feeding" into the search to look through the Articles of the NY Civil Rights Law).

Hope that helps.

Yours,
Jake Marcus, J.D.

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