A Roof Over Our Head

The neediest of us are the most vulnerable. Those of us who are homeless or in of need medical treatment face discrimination when we are most helpless. In New York City a trans-woman who faced discrimination in a drug treatment program was told her case can move forward,

TRANSGENDER WOMAN CAN SUE REHAB FOR DISCRIMINATION, SAYS NY SUPREME COURT JUDGE
Housing Works
Posted by Tim Murphy , December 13, 2013

In an important decision for the transgender community, New York State Supreme Court Justice Debra Silber has ruled in Wilson v. Phoenix House that Plaintiff Sabrina Wilson must be allowed to proceed with her discrimination case against Phoenix House, a national alcohol and drug treatment provider. Armen H. Merjian, Senior Staff Attorney at Housing Works, was the counsel for Ms. Wilson.

Ms. Wilson, who has identified as female since she was 14, entered Phoenix House as an alternative to incarceration. Despite her gender identity, Phoenix House prohibited Ms. Wilson from dressing as a woman, from sitting among women in meetings, and from joining a woman’s support group, even after she won the support of the women in that group.

Ultimately, Phoenix House failed to advance her in treatment, despite her significant progress – she was in fact appointed a resident coordinator – and decided to terminate her from the program, on the basis that they could not “suit [her] needs as a transgender in our program.”

The alcohol and drug center argued that they were exempt from the non-discrimination law,

Phoenix House moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the State and City Human Rights Laws should not apply to Phoenix House, among other reasons because the residential facility was not a “dwelling.” Such arguments, if upheld, would have provided Phoenix House with free rein to discriminate against its clients on the basis of gender and any other protected category, casting it beyond the reach of the law.

This case underlines the need for public accommodation and housing be included in the non-discrimination laws without those categories we could be forced to be housed and treatment in our birth assigned gender.