The bill would add "gender identity, or expression" to the state's anti-discrimination laws.
Attorney General Martha Coakley was among those who provided testimony in favor of the transgender rights legislation.BOSTON — Transgender rights advocates pushed lawmakers on Wednesday to consider legislation that would add "gender identity, or expression" to the state's anti-discrimination laws, resuming a contentious debate on Beacon Hill that has been simmering for years.
"We've been fighting for this for five years, and I think it's a bill whose time has come," Rep. Carl Sciortino, a Medford Democrat, said before a Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill. Sciortino said he has had conversations with House leadership about the bill and is "optimistic" it will get a vote this session.
Another representative, Thomas Sannicandro, said members on both sides of the bill discussed it privately Wednesday during a closed meeting between House Speaker Robert DeLeo and members of his leadership team.
Supporters of the bill that seeks to protect transgender people from discrimination when seeking a job or housing first filed the legislation in 2007. The bill has failed to advance from the Judiciary Committee despite garnering support last year from 104 members of the Legislature.
The bill, refiled in January by Reps. Sciortino and Byron Rushing and Sens. Sonia Chang-Diaz and Benjamin Downing, has 68 co-sponsors this session.
Opponents have expressed concern that the law would open up restrooms, school locker rooms and other single-sex facilities to people of any gender, labeling it the "bathroom bill" to the frustration and anger of advocates.
Ten other states and the District of Columbia have included gender identity and expression in hate crime laws, according to supporters.
At a crowded hearing in the State House Wednesday, Attorney General Martha Coakley said the bill would add clarity to state anti-discrimination laws and give prosecutors the opportunity to pursue hate crimes that impact transgender people in Massachusetts.
"I believe this is our next step in our civil rights law to make clear that people are entitled to equal protection regardless of their gender identity,' Coakley said.
Committee members heard stories from many transgendered people about being discriminated against in their jobs or search for housing. Gunner Scott, director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, told lawmakers transgendered men and women want to "blend in" but are sometimes targeted.
"The reality is transgender women and men are often the victims of brutal and violent crimes," he said.
Dana Zircher, a transgender female from Cambridge who works for Microsoft, described herself as "one of the lucky ones" who kept her job with support from management after "transitioning" in 2003.
"A lot of my transgender brothers and sisters have been marginalized or lost their jobs and are unable to find housing," Zircher told the News Service.
Fervent opponents of the legislation, however, said that the broad language in the bill would jeopardize the assumption of privacy and safety in public restrooms.
"It violates the safety, privacy and modesty of 99.95 percent of the population. You're opening up bathrooms to whatever gender wants to use them with no criteria for proving you're transgender," said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.
Rep. Marc Lombardo, a Republican from Billerica, and Rep. James Lyons, a Republican from Andover, testified together in opposition to the bill, arguing that parents have enough to worry about without being concerned for their children's safety when they use a public restroom or shower in a locker room after a school sporting event.
"Now the working families of the Commonwealth must worry about the moral environment that their children are growing up in," said Lyons, who also testified in favor of eliminating the buffer zones for protestors around abortion clinics.
Lombardo said the bill would erode the "assumed privacy that we live with today," by opening bathrooms and locker rooms to people of both sexes.
"While it is very noble to want to create laws for every possible scenario we as humans will encounter, this law is detrimental to society," Lombardo said.
Coakley criticized unspecified opponents of the bill for "sowing unreasonable fears that grossly and unfairly mischaracterize what this bill does and who it protects." "I hope they have done so unintentionally," Coakley said.
The attorney general noted that Connecticut and Nevada in the past week have passed transgender anti-discrimination employment laws, and said a city ordinance on the books in Boston since 2002 has produced none of unintended consequences warned of by critics.
The cities of Northampton, Amherst and Cambridge have also adopted ordinances protecting transgendered residents from discrimination.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, and Gov. Deval Patrick all submitted written testimony is support of the bill.
Patrick attempted to nudge the statewide effort along earlier this year when he signed an executive order prohibiting all state agencies from making employment decisions based on gender identity.
Rep. Daniel Winslow, a Republican from Norfolk and a former district court judge who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said he was "struggling with the definition, which just seems so broad."
Rep. Sheila Harrington, a freshman Republican from Groton, questioned panelists whether the bill would protect individuals who have not undergone surgery or hormone therapy, but simply "feel" as if they are a member of the opposite sex.
"We want to blend in, not stand out," Scott said, emphasizing that he did not see it as a likely scenario that someone who did not present as a particular sex would use that gender's bathroom or other facility.