If EqMD called this “the lunch counter moment” then that was a terrible misstatement. Few are happy about this bill, and that includes the ED of EqMD.

Wow many in the trans community take no responsibility for this and instead put all the blame on Equality Maryland, a group that they have believed has treated them shabbily for a decade yet they continue to fully rely on them and bitch when it doesn’t work out. You have a lot of smart people in your community, figure out how to win without or with Equality Maryland. Complaining year after year about horrible gays not taking you where you need to go is quite the victim mentality and quite ineffective. Lead, work, lobby, donate (in MD) – don’t wait until the 11th hour and complain.

EQMD’s publicity said this was our “lunch counter moment”. Indeed it is, because as the result of this bill, trans people can be excluded from lunch counters, from using drinking fountains, from being treated in emergency rooms, and kept off the bus completely rather than allowed to sit at the back. It legitimises such forms of discrimination as being consistent with “Equality”. But only for trans people, to treat Gays like that would be highly illegal, and the bill strengthens those provisions.

Here the bill was informally introduced in the House in its usual comprehensive form, the blowback was fierce, and there was no support to maintain it as a comprehensive act. The trans community was unaware, the gay community was otherwise occupied with marriage, and by the time the problem was recognized it was too late.

You should know that it was killed every year during the last term for reasons not associated with the bathroom terrorism theme. There have been few profiles in courage associated with this legislation outside of Delegate Pena-Melnyk.

While today’s vote moves some protections forward, they are insufficent to maintain basic employment protections when the workplace is not a private office. This bill provides no protection for those employed as drivers, those who use hotel rooms as a part of their jobs or those who work in environments where restrooms are common among multiple employers or in a public access area.

Despite housing protections, the current bill language does not protect gender identity to assure admittance in emergency homeless and domestic violence shelters or will result in people being placed in the shelter area based on their birth gender and not their identified and presented gender subjecting them to the risk of sexual assault. The federal courts have already stated that emergency overnight shelters are considered “lodging” and therefore a public accommodation not subject to the Fair Housing Act.

The organizations promoting HB-235 are using an incrementalism strategy to eventually achieve public accommodations. I personally do not think that public accommodations could stand on its own as it would be seen as a sole “bathroom bill”.

The only other state that has ever used an incrementalism approach is California and they learned very quickly that employment without public accommodations did not work. Gender identity was eventually covered under the Unruh Act not by adding gender identity as a protected class but by changing the definition of “sex” to include gender identity.

This law as written is going to open the door to litigation by transgender people who work in environments without non-exclusive public facilities or are required to use off-site public accommodations in the performance of their job functions. This will put an undue burden on employers that now have to field discrimination complaints internally within their own organizations. This is wasted time.

This will only make employers not want to hire transgender people but find another reason not to.

We are at a time when many transgender people are out of work not just because of employment discrimination based on gender identity but also due to the general state of the economy, no guarantees that public or private facilities can be accessed to look for work, no guarantees that access to public transportation will be granted and the lack of access to higher education due to discrimination and harassment.

If this bill passes, we are sending the message that it is OK to discriminate public accommodations. Even though it is OK to discriminate right now, this law will only highlight the alleged legitimacy of denying transsexual and intersex people access to the basic functions of life.