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By Cyd Zeigler Jr.
Friday, May 28, 2004
A growing restlessness among transgender activists and the City Council has turned
attention to the city’s Commission on Human Rights. Activists claim the
commission is failing to adequately implement changes to the New York City Human
Rights Law that will protect transgender New Yorkers.
The city’s Human Rights Law was amended in April 2002 to broaden the
scope of protection from gender discrimination by defining “gender” to
include actual or perceived sex, as well as a “person’s gender
identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that
gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different
from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person
at birth.”
The Equal Employment Practices Commission, which aims to eliminate discrimination
in the areas of employment, public accommodation and housing, held a hearing
on the subject on May 20 in Downtown Manhattan.
Avery Mehlman, deputy commissioner of the New York City Human Rights Commission,
testified that the commission has enforced the law since its inception and
has, to date, filed eight cases alleging violations of the law. The Commission,
however, has come under heavy fire not because of what they have done but because
of what they have not done.
After the bill was signed into law by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the commission
determined that a set of guidelines was needed to implement the law. They created
a working group, consisting of transgender New Yorkers, commission staff and
others, to create those guidelines. In May 2003, the group gave the commission
their recommendation.
Over two years after the bill was signed into law, those guidelines have not
been adopted, leaving transgender people, their employers and others confused
about the extent of the law, and unable to accurately interpret it.
On March 30, 2004, several City Council members, including Speaker Gifford
Miller, sent a letter to Patricia L. Gatling, chair of the Commission on Human
Rights, expressing concern that the commission has taken so long to formulate
the guidelines. The council members also asked the commissioner to afford the
city council with a detailed timeline of the approval and full implementation
of the guidelines.
The commissioner responded with a letter that a source close to the City Council
called “unsatisfactory.” That letter failed to offer any outline
as to when the guidelines would be released.
Lee Hudson, spokesperson for the Commission on Human Rights, told the Blade,
simply, “They’ll be out soon” — clarifying that as
saying she hopes they will be out by autumn. “It’s clear to me
that the commissioner is not interested in enforcing the law,” said Pauline
Park, a longtime transgender activist and co-chair of the New York Association
for Gender Rights Advocacy, who sat on the working group.
Presently, the guidelines are being reviewed by the city’s corporate
counsel. The counsel has been reviewing them since last summer and have, according
to Hudson, solicited information and feedback from various agencies around
the city.
“But why has it taken them a year to do that?” Park asked. “They
could have done that last May.”
Hudson said the commission is small and that their resources are spread thin.
Dean Spade, a transgender attorney who also sat on the working group, resounded
Park’s sentiments.
“The law has been made meaningless by the commission,” Spade said.
He founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit group that provides
free legal services to trans people facing discrimination, in 2002.
Transgender activist Pauline Park says
the Human Rights Commission does not have her best interest at heart. |
“The commission has been enforcing this law since its inception,” Mehlman
said at the hearing. He noted that the commission has filed eight cases alleging
violations of the law, and that they have distributed over 10 thousand palm
cards to educate the public about this new amendment to the law. Those palm
cards give a short description of the law and contact information for organizations
that transgender people can turn to in need.
Spade says that number of filed cases — eight — tells the sad
story of this law. He claims to have personally referred 30 to 40 people to
the commission. The fact that only eight cases have come out of it “is
indicative of how they’re treated when they get there, how they’re
treated on the phone, and how seriously the commission is taking this,” Spade
said.
One male-to-female person whom Spade referred to the commission had been harassed
by a security guard when coming out of the women’s restroom while taking
the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). That person was turned away by the administrator
at the commission and was told that her experience was not protected under
the new law.
That person was later contacted by a supervisor to tell her that the case
did fall under the new amendment. This kind of confusion, Spade said, would
have been avoided had the commission released its guidelines in a timely fashion.
“If Commission staffers themselves don’t know the guidelines,
then the commission has not done its job,” Park said.
Hudson takes issue with the notion that the commission is not interested in
helping. She said the guidelines are not required by law and that the law is
being enforced even before they are released.
“We wouldn’t be talking about this if we didn’t care,” Hudson
said. “Of course we care. Just doing the guidelines shows that we care.
And, the fact that the guidelines haven’t come out as quickly as the
community might have liked is not an indication that we don’t care.”
Even when the guidelines are implemented, Park and Spade are concerned that
they will be watered down. At issue are the differences between pre-op., post-op.
and non-op. transgender people in the eyes of the law. While post-op. male-to-female
transgender people are considered legally women, others, like Park, who choose
not to have an operation, can face harassment and abuse in choosing a restroom
or applying for a driver’s license.
Once the guidelines are issued, though, they’ll have the force of law.
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