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From the Montgomery County Sentinel

Group will challenge CRG transgender petition


by Nathan Carrick
Thursday, March 13, 2008

This fight isn't over.

Even after the Montgomery County Board of Elections last week certified a petition to get a referendum question about the county's new transgender rights law on the ballot in November, Maryland's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights group says the petition is bunk and will fight to get the question removed.

Citizens for a Responsible Government, the group that created the petition, says it turned in more than 32,000 signatures of which more than 26,000 were certified by the Board of Elections. This means the group has at least 1,000 more than the 25,001 required to put bill 23-07 up for a vote among county residents.

Marjorie Roher, the Board of Elections' public information officier, said it certified 26,801 signatures and rejected 3,742. The total turned in, Roher said, was 30,543.

Dan Furmansky, Executive Director of Equality Maryland, said his organization has hired a lawyer to make the case that many of those signatures are invalid and the law shouldn't be put on the ballot. But barring that, "I'm confident that if this does reach the ballot, Montgomery County residents will support the rights of transgender people," Furmansky said.

The bill's sponsor, Council member Duchy Trachtenberg, said she's not sure that the petition will make it to the ballot because of the legal challenges the LGBT community will file by the end of next week.

"We've heard two major areas of complaints," Trachtenberg said. "First is that there was a mischaracterization of what the bill was. The other is the question of whether the signatures are really valid."

She added, "People called my office complaining that the county passed a bill that creates unisex bathrooms. That's obviously not what this does. I'm confident that if, and I underline if, this gets on the ballot, the people of Montgomery County will vote against discrimination."

The law, passed unanimously by the County Council in November, is intended to protect transgender people from being discriminated against in housing and employment. The CRG claims that vague language that doesn't expressly limit transgender people to using the bathroom or locker room of their biological gender could give easy access to peeping Toms and pedophiles.

"It's the racial desegregation code, just with the words 'gender identity' added in," CRG director Theresa Rickman said. "So if this doesn't cover bathrooms [now] then you have to believe bathrooms were never racially desegregated."

The County Council, County Executive and Equality Maryland say that the law does not include bathrooms and locker rooms, indicating that it does exclude facilities that are distinctly personal and private. Rickman says personal and private refers to membership clubs, not bathrooms.

"If you [Council President Mike Knapp] are so convinced it doesn't cover bathrooms, say so!" Rickman said. "Put an amendment in the law that says bathrooms aren't included."

She added, "I think it's interesting that they [Equality Maryland] don't want the voters to vote on this."

Patrick Lacefield, a spokesman for County Executive Isiah Leggett, said that if the goal of the CRG was to keep transgender people from going into bathrooms and locker rooms, they've achieved that. "The legislative history is very clear. There was nothing that included bathrooms, then someone put it in, then it got taken out again," Lacefield said. "It specifically says it does not apply to private and intimate facilities."

Critics of the petition say that CRG volunteers misrepresented the bill while gathering signatures, suggesting that the bill would endanger women by letting men into women's bathrooms and locker rooms. Questions have been raised by top county attorneys about whether misrepresenting the petition to signers invalidates the petition.

A summary of the bill was printed on the back of every page of the petition and a full copy of the bill was on hand at each petition site, as required by law.

"It's obvious that we've heard from a number of people that the people collecting signatures were misrepresenting the issue," Lacefield said. "It's unfortunate. There's a lot that needs doing in this county. We're focused on a lot of other issues, up to and including the budget.