This city already bars discrimination against women, minorities, homosexuals, and bisexuals officially - now it has voted to offer legal protection to transsexuals.
The Washington Times reports the City Council voted "unanimously" to amend Boulder's almost three-decade old Human Rights Ordinance to ban discrimination against transsexuals in housing, employment, and public accommodations. The vote met with little opposition after it was first proposed by Boulder's Human Relations Commission in November, the Times says.
The new law goes into effect March 1 and defines transsexuals as having "a persistence sense that a person's gender identity is incongruent with the person's biological sex."
"It's very important for Boulder to take a stand against this type of discrimination," said Boulder Mayor Will Toor to the Times.
The ordinance also mandates "reasonably consistent gender presentation of workers," the paper says, meaning a worker can't change his "gender identity" more than three times in any 18-month period. It even allows transsexuals full access to bathrooms marked for their new sex.
Only two of about twenty residents who spoke at the Feb. 2 meeting opposed the measure. "It's unnecessary because we are all awarded constitutional rights against discrimination," said Janet Bellis, one of the two. "And I really think that creating small protected classes is discriminatory in its own right."
