Transgender Activists Work To Change State's Discrimination Laws
Hartford Advocate
By Adam Bulger
March 1 2007
Brenda Louise, a transwoman, said her gender transition cost her job as a machinery repair mechanic in a woodworking company.
“As soon as I had my sexual reassignment surgery, they terminated me,” Louise said. “An employer really puts up a smokescreen, and uses anything they possibly can.”
Louise sued her old boss. The case was settled out of court.
“Basically the laws didn’t have the teeth behind them. The pressure was taken off of them,” Louise said of her old employers.
What Louise and others were arguing for in the legislature last week is for a modest change in the the state’s anti-discrimination laws so that transgendered people would be protected. If bill SB-1044, An Act Concerning Discrimination, is enacted, supporters say the bill would dramatically improve the lives of the state’s transgendered.
“The bill adds to the nondiscrimination clauses in Connecticut the words ‘gender identity or expression.’ What that does is it prohibits discrimination on housing, employment and credit,” said Jerimarie Liesegang, the director of transgender rights group Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition said.
The hearing was the beginning of the bill’s second life; it passed the Judiciary Committee last year near the end of the legislative session, and then was lost in the shuffle.
“It basically ran out of time, like a lot of bills do,” Liesegang said. But there is optimistism about the bill’s chances this session. After Liesegang testified, state Senator John Kissel said he would support the bill.
Other states, including New Jersey, California and Maine, have adopted similar laws. Connecticut has two legal precedents for the bill. In 2003, the state’s hate crime legislation was changed to include protection for transgendered people. Additionally, in 2000, the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities ruled in its declaration on behalf of John/Jane Doe that transgendered people are protected under the state’s discrimination laws. However that measure has far less legal power than a legislative bill.
Employment among the transgendered community is a problem, the severity of which is difficult to assess.
“I would venture to say that 60 percent of the transpeople in Connecticut are unemployed — there are no specific hard-core statistics because we’re a highly oppressed, marginalized community,” Liesegang said.
Executive director of Connecticut Outreach Society, male-to-female transgendered person Diana said discrimination against the transgendered is commonplace.
“In support groups, I’ve seen people lose their jobs and lose housing,” Diana said.
When a transgendered person loses their job, they’re given a lot of different reasons by their boss, Diana said.
“They say it’ll ruin business or drive off a customer — there’s always an excuse,” Diana said.●
Yes, that’s me in the article, I was interviewed by the reporter for the article and I was interviewed yesterday for an article in the New Haven Advocate coming out next week.
Terrific! It's true, there's always some other excuse, other than the real reason.
ReplyDelete