Discrimination against transgender people would be banned in Montgomery County Code under a bill Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg says she will introduce today. Council Members Valerie Ervin and Marc Elrich are co-sponsoring the measure.
The legislation would “prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations, cable television service and taxicab service on the basis of gender identity” and amend county laws to add gender identity discrimination to the lists of potential types of prejudice.
“Transgender people continue to face discrimination,” Trachtenberg told The Examiner on Monday. “It’s essential we take action at the local levels because most courts have found that general laws prohibiting discrimination don’t apply to transgender people.”
Bill advocates, including Trachtenberg, said more than 100 other jurisdictions, including 13 states, the District of Columbia and the city of Baltimore already had passed similar measures.
“This is not radical legislation,” Trachtenberg said. “That needs to be underscored.”
Dr. Dana Beyer, Trachtenberg’s senior policy adviser and herself a transgendered person, said it was difficult to estimate the number of transgender people living in Montgomery County.
“The census has never asked that question,” Beyer said. “The census only began asking questions about sexual identity in 2000. To be fair, it’s hard to know how many people would have answered it honestly anyhow because the discrimination is so real. The fear of discrimination is pretty profound.”
The bill applies to those who identify with a gender other than that assigned to them at birth. Beyer, a physician, says the medical profession estimates “gender variance” occurs in about one in 1,000 people.
Beyer said she has experienced only “subtle discrimination” in Montgomery County, that tends to revolve around “lewd comments.”
“I’m also a physician and a surgeon and that matters,” Beyer said. “If you are in a lower socioeconomic status, where you’re at risk of prejudice in general, being transgender increases your risk of being discriminated against.”
Michael Dennis, compliance director for the County Human Rights Commission, said he was aware of a few complaints of discrimination against transgender people in Montgomery County, but they had occurred a couple years ago.
“My recollection is they involved termination of employment once the employee had begun the gender-change process and it became clear to the employers what was going on,” Dennis said.
