Punk Yoga 2016-04-22

[Alkarii]

It was some conservative news site. At least, I think it was conservative. They cited four examples, but I think one was caught before he did anything, and he was also, I think (can't remember very well) the only one of the four to claim being transgender.

The others had just worn disguises to get in the women's room.

Let me see if I can find it. They actually gave names, but because it's a conservative news site, I haven't been too sure of its veracity.

(I've noticed that any source that seems to be overtly conservative or liberal doesn't seem too concerned about the actual truth, just how they can twist it to fit their market.

[lake_wrangler]

The concern isn't so much the people who are actually transitioning, as it is an attempt to make it more difficult for someone to exploit that. There have been instances of individuals dressing as women to enter the women's rest room to spy on them or commit sexual assault.

you know I keep hearing this trope, but nobody has a link to where this has happened.

I don't have links right now, but I have seen a web page that included video footage of a newscast report about that very thing: a man, dressed as a woman, going into the women's bathroom, staying there a long time, leering, I believe, and who may or may not have exposed himself as well.

[lake_wrangler]

The concern isn't so much the people who are actually transitioning, as it is an attempt to make it more difficult for someone to exploit that. There have been instances of individuals dressing as women to enter the women's rest room to spy on them or commit sexual assault.

you know I keep hearing this trope, but nobody has a link to where this has happened.

I don't have links right now, but I have seen a web page that included video footage of a newscast report about that very thing: a man, dressed as a woman, going into the women's bathroom, staying there a long time, leering, I believe, and who may or may not have exposed himself as well.

For the sake of completeness, so that no one can say that the claims are merely attempts at FUD, here are some examples of just that hapening:
(Please note: I normally would not resurrect a thread, unless I felt it was important. This issue concerns the safety of women and young girls, so I think it is warranted. I am not trying to stir trouble. I think my current posting record should show that.)

Transgender man may continue using locker room with six year old girls
Man strips in front of girls in swimming pool locker says transgender law allows it
Sexual predator jailed after claiming to be transgender in order to assault women in shelter

These links are not for the specific example I had quoted previously. I still can't remember where I had seen that one... The point is, though, that it's not just fear-mongering, but that this kind of things does happen, when poorly thought out laws are passed.
(Please also note that I was not looking for such links (I don't have enough time to do what I need to do in a week, without searching out stuff on the internet just to prove a point), they just happened to show up in an email from a conservative source, this week.)

[Sgt. Howard]

These laws from the same party that accuses the Republicans of waging a 'war on women'...?

[Warrl]

The much-criticized New Jersey state law does not require stores to keep transwomen out of women's restroom, or to press charges when one is detected. It simply establishes that claiming to be transgender or temporarily female is not a defense against trespass charges when someone who is male from the neck down is found to be in the women's restroom. If a store chooses not to bring a trespass charge, and no other charge is found to apply, then such a person faces no legal consequence.

This is exactly what the status quo was before one city in the state enacted a law establishing "I'm feeling female at the moment" as a rock-solid defense against such a trespass charge and grounds for the person who would have been accused to instead sue the store for discrimination and harassment.

The large majority of transwomen are not going to use the women's restroom unless they are dressed as female and making a decent attempt at passing as female. (Not saying they are necessarily doing a good job of it. But the ones who aren't, are obviously trying.) And while in the women's restroom they are not going to want to draw extra attention to themselves by behaving oddly for women in a restroom. In other words, they are not creating a problem, and they aren't going to be in there longer than is normal.

Trespass is one of those useful laws which can be used to deal with a lot of unrelated things that are less clearly defined. Part of its usefulness is that it's discretionary on the part of the alleged victim or his/her agent. - if that person says "no, it's okay" then there is no offense. "Leering" is hard to define. "Male in the women's restroom" is much easier. The usefulness of the discretion is well-demonstrated by "Physically-male transwoman, who looks somewhat like a woman, in the women's restroom acting properly for a woman in a women's restroom" versus "Man in a dress in the women's restroom leering and harassing women"; the difference that is hard to legally define can be used to identify when there actually is a problem and then the well-defined part can be selectively applied to fix that problem.

A city wanted to take that tool away.

The state gave it back.

And then a bunch of people condemned the state for taking it away. Which it hadn't.

[AnotherFairportfan]

The much-criticized New Jersey state law ...

New Jersey has a law? That sounds more like North Carolina.

If it is, that is a much-abridged statement of the NC law - the NC law forbids cities or counties passing ANY rights rules that exceed the state's current standard, and has other effects making it difficult r impossible to use even those laws for redress:

As has been widely reported, the North Carolina legislature rushed last month to pass HB2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, which requires transgender people (and everyone else) to use public restrooms according to the biological sex on their birth certificate. It also bars local governments from passing ordinances like Charlotte’s.

The legislation doesn’t stop there, however. Tucked inside is language that strips North Carolina workers of the ability to sue under a state anti-discrimination law, a right that has been upheld in court since 1985. “If you were fired because of your race, fired because of your gender, fired because of your religion,” said Allan Freyer, head of the Workers’ Rights Project at the N.C. Justice Center in Raleigh, “… you no longer have a basic remedy.”

“The LGBT issues were a Trojan horse,” added Erika Wilson, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who co-directs a legal clinic for low-income plaintiffs with job and housing discrimination claims. The broader change hasn’t received much attention, she said, because “people were so caught up in [the LGBT] part of the law that this snuck under the radar.”

Conservative-leaning groups have been trying for decades to reduce the number of civil lawsuits in the states. In HB2, lawmakers accomplished this by adding a single sentence to the state’s employment discrimination law that says: “[No] person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.”

The language does not repeal North Carolina’s job-bias law, which continues to ban discrimination on the basis of race, sex, age, religion, or disability. But it forces workers seeking redress for discrimination into the federal system, where access is more difficult, the rules are much more complicated, and businesses often have significant advantages. Time, in particular, is on employers’ side: Under federal law, fired workers have just 180 days to file a claim, versus three years in state court. In the past, workers who missed the federal deadline — not uncommon for someone in emotional and economic crisis — could sue under state law instead, said Raleigh attorney Eric Doggett. Now, he predicted, many will discover they’re “hosed.”

{snip}

LGBT supporters had feared the bill would be broad, but they were stunned by just how far it went. In addition to requiring that people use bathrooms according to their biological sex, the measure preempted local governments from passing any laws aimed at protecting gay and transgender people, a provision that immediately nullified more than 20 existing local ordinances. Another provision banned local minimum wage laws like the $15-an-hour “living wage” ordinances gaining traction around the country. The state minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

The passage affecting discrimination lawsuits amends the North Carolina Equal Employment Practices Act (1977), which declares that it is against the state’s “public policy” to discriminate in employment “on account of race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex or handicap.” The act — which applied to businesses with 15 or more employees — did not contain explicit language allowing alleged victims of job bias to sue. But since the mid–1980s, North Carolina courts have held that the “public policy” doctrine does give people who are wrongfully fired because of discrimination the right to recover damages under common (non-statutory) law. In the space of the 12-hour special session, HB2 “wiped out this entire body of law that’s been in place for the last 30 years,” said Chapel Hill lawyer Laura Noble.

Further:

He said he is convinced that the inclusion of the prohibition on filing discrimination claims in state court and the wage restrictions was “a political power grab.”

“I understand those two elements were a surprise to most legislators, and may have been to the governor,” Kennedy said. During the special session, most legislators did not get a copy of the bill until the beginning of a House judiciary committee meeting.

Richard Rainey, with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice LLP in Charlotte, said he believes legislative leaders overstepped their authority when they added the discrimination language to the bill.

“I don’t agree with the perspective that those steps were necessary, and I am a defense lawyer,” Rainey said.

He said the law takes away communities’ ability to pursue the best contracts possible since they can no longer require private contractors to pay a wage that’s in line with the local economy.

“It was essentially a preemptive strike against municipalities who are more liberal than other parts of the state,” Rainey said.

Laura Noble, with The Noble Law Firm of Chapel Hill, said that with HB 2, “our representatives inexplicably chose to protect employers who discriminate against their employees from our state’s system of justice.”

“For almost 30 years, North Carolinians who have been fired because of their religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex or disability have been able to bring claims in state courts under the common law theory of wrongful discharge in violation of public policy,” Noble said.

{snip}

Noble raised a free-market scenario to supporters of the bill, saying that Republicans tend not to penalize companies or individuals with taxes for being successful.

“Why should urban communities be limited in their contract requirements with wages just because they are performing better than other parts of the state?” she asked.

There was an attempt by an opponent of the bill to turn the three provisions into separate bills. That suggestion was snuffed out by bill supporters who cited the overall effort to rein in what they considered oversteps by local authorities.

Kennedy said he believes that separate bills tackling the elimination of the state court option on discrimination lawsuits and on the set wage requirement would not have passed the legislature.

“They would have faced more severe scrutiny at the committee level from the public and some committee members,” Kennedy said. “There would have more media reports.

“Without the momentum of the restroom ordinance, their chances of passing in a regular season were not good.”

Sidebar to the above:

Public accomodations

The law blocked a range of protections from taking effect in the Charlotte ordinance, which would have covered gays and lesbians as well as bisexual and transgender people when they try to check into hotels, eat in restaurants or hail cabs; it also added marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to Charlotte's list of protected characteristics in public accommodations and commercial businesses.

The law instead created a new statewide public accommodations policy that prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin or biological sex. But the law includes no specific LGBT protections.

It also forbids cities and counties throughout North Carolina from imposing any additional requirements on employers. A handful of local governments had made veterans a protected class, and this is no longer allowed.

Just as the Patriot Act was, at base, a right-wing power-grab that included extensive empire-building and union-busting language, this one was sold on the basis of one hot-button issue which, in fact, is a non-issue, to cover up what else was in it. If that were not the case, no-one involved would have minded making the non-bathroom parts of the bill separate bills.

[Warrl]

The much-criticized New Jersey state law ...

New Jersey has a law? That sounds more like North Carolina.

oops, you're correct.

If it is, that is a much-abridged statement of the NC law - the NC law forbids cities or counties passing ANY rights rules that exceed the state's current standard,

You mean, "rights rules" that strip rights from the large majority including property-owners.

[AnotherFairportfan]

The much-criticized New Jersey state law ...

New Jersey has a law? That sounds more like North Carolina.

oops, you're correct.

If it is, that is a much-abridged statement of the NC law - the NC law forbids cities or counties passing ANY rights rules that exceed the state's current standard,

You mean, "rights rules" that strip rights from the large majority including property-owners.

No further response - except to say that's the way opponents described civil rights legislation in the 50s and 60s.

And to mention that i have a trans relative who resides in NC.

And that's already too much politics.

[GlytchMeister]

*pulls up hood and sits quietly in the corner, avoiding eye contact*

[Warrl]

No further response - except to say that's the way opponents described civil rights legislation in the 50s and 60s.

That description was, too often, incorrect in the 50s and 60s. Back then, "civil rights" legislation was (often) NOT reducing rights because the rights were already reduced - the legislation simply changed the law from "you MUST do X with your property" to "you MUST NOT do X with your property". The property-owner's rights were equally infringed either way; the new infringement was less offensive in its effects than the old one - and frequently less expensive to comply with, which is why those who favored the discrimination needed laws mandating it and punishing businesses that did not engage in it with sufficient vigor - but why was the option of removing the infringement so rarely considered?

Of course, the "must not" then applied in parts of the country where there had never been the corresponding "must". Which isn't so good. But then, in some places the "must not" was already in effect by state or local law.

(One major exception to the above is laws regarding government action, such as segregation of public schools. The government has no rights except what the people willingly grant to it, and I doubt that black folks willingly granted the government the right to dump on them while making them help pay for the dump truck. There is no justification for the government to discriminate among citizens on any basis other than their actual, individual, actions.)

The Charlotte legislation changed the law from "you MAY do X with your property" to "you MUST NOT do X with your property" - a clear reduction in the property-owner's rights. The state legislation changed the "must not" back to "may".