A Skirmish Win

We didn’t win a battle but we won the right to be in the battle, a judge ruled that the police harassment case can proceed.

Supreme Court will not hear this police department's appeal in transgender harassment suit
NJ.com
By Michaelangelo Conte
October 31, 2017

JERSEY CITY -- A lawsuit filed by a transgender man who said he was threatened and harassed by Jersey City police after being arrested remains on track for trial now that the state Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal filed by police.

"It gives our client the opportunity now to have his trial and get in front of a jury and have this tried on the merits," attorney Deborah Mains said today of her client, Shakeem Malik Holmes.

Holmes sued the Jersey City Police Department in 2014 over an August 2012 incident in which he was subjected to "demeaning, insulting and threatening comments," because he is a transgender man, according to the suit.

Holmes had been arrested on a shoplifting charge, which was later dismissed, New Jersey Law Journal reported. He had already legally changed his name from Malika Sakinah Holmes and was in the process of transitioning from female to male when he was at the police department's Bureau of Criminal Identification that day.

For me this is our worst nightmare being harassed while in custody, there is nothing that we can do about, we are trapped and are at the mercy of the law officers.

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Today I am at a meeting planning next year’s LGBT political agenda, how we are going to move forward in the coming years. Most of the time I am the only trans person at these meeting and I take the task to make sure that trans issues are heard. I don’t want to be under the GAY umbrella but under the LGBT umbrella where we our voices are all equal and not dominated by one large “gay” organization.

So it should be interesting to see what comes out of this meeting.