Double negative included in addition to protections adopted last year could bar trans from using gender-specific restrooms
DAVID TAFFET | Staff Writer taffet@dallasvoice.com
- Lisa Thomas
FORT WORTH — A double negative in one sentence of an addition to the nondiscrimination protections in the Fort Worth ordinance would enshrine one form of bias against transgenders.
Proposed Section 17-48 (b) says “It shall not be unlawful for any person or any employee or agent thereof to deny any person entry into any restroom, shower room, bathhouse or similar facility which has been designated for use by persons of the opposite sex.”
Fort Worth assistant attorney Gerald Pruitt confirmed that, as written, the clause allows anyone to deny a transgender person presenting as one sex entry into a restroom if that person has not completed transition.
The concern among members of the transgender community stems from an incident in which a transgender woman was arrested in Houston for using a women’s restroom in a public library.
Earlier this year, Mayor Annise Parker issued an executive order that prohibited that form of discrimination, allowing transgenders to use whichever restroom they feel is appropriate in any city facility. The library would have been included in Parker’s order.
The November arrest contradicted the order but the action was against earlier laws already on the books.
“We have a number of transgender employees in Fort Worth,” Pruitt said. “I have no knowledge of any action like this ever being taken.”
He said that a situation arose about five years ago when someone began transitioning on the job. Someone who had been male was suddenly presenting as female and began using the woman’s room, he said.
“I think that’s where most of the angst is,” he said, explaining that someone everyone knew as a man began using the women’s restroom.
Pruitt said that the solution that satisfied everyone was that a bathroom convenient to the trans woman’s office was designated as her private restroom.
But he denied that this particular clause was in reaction to the Houston case, which he said he had not heard about before. And he said that as far as he knew, the wording was correct.
Tom Anable at Fairness Fort Worth was concerned about that one clause. He wondered why, if something was described as “not unlawful,” it would have been listed under the heading “unlawful acts.”
“I have sent it to staff at [the Human Rights Campaign] to ask for input on this,” Anable said.
Lisa Thomas, appointed to Fort Worth’s Human Rights Commission by Councilmember Joel Burns, said she had been “made aware of this discrepancy.”
“I’ve asked the chair and administrator of the commission to investigate what is the intent of these words, knowing it is not the intent to bar admission to restrooms,” Thomas said.
She said that in all discussions in the city, the intent has been not to discriminate.
“But we have to make sure we are all in alignment and right now it doesn’t seem like we are,” she said.
- Tom Anable
Section 17-48 (a) (1) adds language that bars discrimination against transgender persons. “Sexual orientation, transgender, gender identity or gender expression” are added to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability and age as protected categories.
No “person, employee or agent” may deny anyone “advantages, facilities or services” that Section states. So section (a) (1) contradicts Section (b) since the second section does deny admission to facilities.
Section 17-48 (a) (2) makes it illegal to deny anyone admission or expel someone from a place of public accommodation “for alleged non-compliance with a dress code.”
Exemptions to the ordinance include any facility whose services are restricted to members and their guests, religious organizations, private day cares, kindergartens or nursery schools.
But that exemption applies equally to ability to discriminate based on race or religion as sexual orientation or gender identity.
Again, section (a) (2) contradicts Section (b) because admission is denied.
Violating any provision of the code is a misdemeanor. So presumably, any person discriminating against a transgender person by refusing to allow them to use a specific restroom would be charged with a misdemeanor.
The word “not” may have been placed in the sentence by mistake. If so, these additions have not been adopted yet and may be changed before the city council votes on them.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 17, 2010.
After being present at the council meeting where this ordinance was approved, I don’t think the wording was a mistake. With that being said…segregation DOES NOT equal equality…it DOES equal discrimination. The transgendered are being treated differently. One of the requirements for gender transition is that the person must live in the target gender for a minimum of one year., During that time, if someone in transition goes to Fort Worth, you may be told that you have to use the restroom that is not in congruence with your gender identity or the gender you are presenting as. When that occurs, and you are assaulted, raped, or murdered while wearing a dress in the men’s restroom, I hope you remember the governmental entity that created this problem. If Houston’s mayor fixed the problem quickly, maybe our mayor can too. He (and many other city officials) is a very honorable man in my book.
What next, bathroom segregation based on sexual orientation? After all, that is what this is all about…”normal” society feeling safe in the bathroom. Fort Worth is now representing itself as a discrimination free city where everyone is treated differently. Now that this has come to light…it is time for them to fix this.
Tori, what I wondered was this. While the separate bathroom was a solution that satisfied everyone, according to Pruitt, it worked only in the particular situation of one person in one workplace. What about a transgender person coming to a city facility? That was the case in Houston where someone used a bathroom in a library and was arrested. What about that same transgender person working for the city in one building who happens to be in a different building?
David, I may be mistaken, but if I remember correctly, the person that Pruitt was talking about told me that she was required to use that separate bathroom even AFTER her surgery. As it is written, if someone knows or even PERCEIVES someone to betransgendered or of the opposite sex than that designated on the restroom (this could even be applied to cisgendered women that look very masculine), then they can be kept from entering the restroom by ANYBODY…it doesn’t even have to be a person of authority. As far as a city employee being in different buildings, I brought that up today. I frequently go to other city buildings but I try to avoid the restrooms while there. I know it was not the authors, or the city council’s intention to discriminate, but what is on the books is just that. This applies to all transgendered people living, working, and visiting Fort Worth…including city employees (as far as I know, the city ‘s Personnel Rules and Regulations (PRR) do not have a bathroom policy or any specific policy regarding trransgendered employees in or out of transition.