FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – November 12, 2014
CONTACT: ACLU of Florida Media Office, media@aclufl.org, (786) 363-2737
MIAMI, FL - Today, the Miami-Dade County Commission’s Public Safety and Animal Services Committee passed a proposal to amend the County’s Human Rights Ordinance to include protections for people who are transgender.
The proposed legislation would amend the County’s Human Rights Ordinance – which protects against discrimination in employment, family leave, public accommodations, credit and financial practices, and housing – to also prohibit discrimination against people based on gender identity or expression.
In response to the vote, ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon, who spoke at the commission meeting, stated:
“This is an important step forward for the thousands of transgender individuals living in Miami-Dade County.
“People should be entitled to compete for jobs or apply for services based on their skills and their abilities, not based on who they are or how they’re born. This is idea that the human rights ordinance was created to protect: that people should be judged on their merits, not their biology.
“The scene at today’s meeting reminded me of the battle in 1998 to amend the Human Rights Ordinance to protect gay and lesbian people in Miami from discrimination. We were pleased that today the committee members rejected the same notion that there is a religious right to discriminate that the Commissioners rejected in the historic 1998 vote to protect gays and lesbians in our county.”
The proposed amendment to the human rights ordinance now goes to the full commission.
More information on the ACLU of Florida’s work to protect the rights of LGBT Floridians is available here: https://aclufl.org/issues/lgbt-rights/
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