Know Your Rights: Transgender Rights in New England
We’ve come a good way towards establishing legal protections for transgender people in New England in the past several years. In 2011, both Connecticut and Massachusetts added gender identity to their anti-discrimination laws, joining Rhode Island (2001), Maine (2005) and Vermont (2007) in providing protections in employment, housing and credit, and, in all but Massachusetts, public accommodations (like restaurants, bars, parks, stores, hospitals, shelters, etc.).
While the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination(MCAD), where discrimination complaints are filed, may provide public accommodations protections for transgender people using “sex” as the protected characteristic, securing explicit protections for transgender people in public settings is crucial. For instance, GLAD recently worked with a young woman who was prohibited from sleeping in the women’s dormitory at a homeless shelter on the North Shore because she is transgender. Instead, she was offered a mat and sleeping space on the floor of the shelter’s donations room and in a common area outside of the women’s bathroom and next to the men’s dormitory, putting her safety at risk.
Fortunately, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition and the Massachusetts Transgender Equal Rights Coalition (consisting of GLAD and many other organizations), is now working hard to add gender identity as a “protected characteristic” to the Commonwealth’s public accommodations anti-discrimination law.
The Coalition is holding a Community Action Day at the Massachusetts State House on Thursday, January 17th at 11am in the Suite 167 conference room. All transgender people and allies are encouraged to attend and meet with your legislators to ask for co-sponsorship for the Trans Equal Access Bill.
Read the rest of this post at our blog Equal Justice Under Law