A proposal to add transgender protections to DART’s nondiscrimination policy will be presented to the transit agency’s Economic Opportunity & Diversity Committee on Tuesday.
DART spokesman Morgan Lyons said tomorrow’s agenda item is merely a staff briefing, and committee members won’t vote on the proposed policy change until a recommendation is presented in May. If the committee approves the recommendation at that time, it would proceed to the agency’s Board of Directors, which likely would take a final vote in June.
“We’ve still got a few meetings to go through, but that’s the standard practice for any policy change,” Lyons said. “We’re following through on what we said we would do with this issue in the conversations with the Resource Center.”
Lyons added that while tomorrow’s meeting is open to the public, the committee won’t take input from the audience.
The proposal to add trans protections comes in the wake of an outcry from the LGBT community over DART’s attempt to intervene in a familiy court case to oppose a bus driver’s gender-marker change.
Tomorrow’s meeting is at 1:30 p.m. in DART Conference Room C, on the first floor of the agency’s headquarters at 1401 Pacific Ave. in Dallas.
2 Comments
Are they still planning to intervene in the personal lives of their employees? Maybe they think “sure, we will add transgender protections then once they are identified we will go have their gender changed”.
No Dana some of the board members are looking into; Why? and How much did it cost DART (during budget constraints).
The extremely concise paraphrase of a conversation I had today on the phone with one board member~ This is a major metro area, this is the 21st Century, this portrays a very negative image of Dallas and North Texas. And they really do want to know how much has DART expended fighting against their own long term employee (25 year veteran) that just wants to lead her life. And they also want to know specifically what justification the legal department wants to provide defending their actions. The diversity program is clearly lacking and outdated (’96)
Progress while seeming slow is moving very well. What must be remembered is that DART is not just a quasi-governmental body. It is a corporation and progress/changes must follow a prescribed method within the legal constraints of its corporate charter/articles of incorporation. There are prescribed procedures and policies for making changes. This is actually moving very rapidly through their policies and procedures.