Brooklyn Judge Rejects Constitutional Challenge to NYC Gender Identity Discrimination Law
Arthur S. Leonard
http://newyorklawschool.typepad.com/leonardlink/2011/01/brooklyn-judge-rejects-constitutional-challenge-to-nyc-gender-identity-discrimination-law.htmlA New York State trial judge in Brooklyn rejected the New York City Transit Authority's argument that the city's law banning gender identity discrimination in places of public accommodation is unconstitutional as applied to a claim that a transit worker directed transphobic language at a member of the public seeking assistance in using a Metrocard. In a decision dated December 29 but not released to the parties until January 21, Supreme Court Justice Kenneth P. Sherman denied a motion for summary judgment by the Transit Authority and the accused transit worker, while granting a motion by the New York City Law Department to intervene in the case in order to defend the constitutionality of the city law.
The lawsuit arose from two incidents during July 2006 when Tracy Bumpus claims to have been the victim of transphobic verbal harassment by Lorna Smith, a transit worker then on duty at the Nostrand Avenue A Train subway station in Brooklyn. Bumpus claims that on July 16 she asked Smith for assistance in using a Metrocard, and Smith responded with "a steady stream of discriminatory, transgender-phobic epithets at Ms. Bumpus, verbally harassing her and haranguing her with vicious transphobic language in an extremely loud voice, pointedly doing so publicly to humiliate and harass Ms. Bumpus."
