Boca Raton Officials Compare LGBT Equality to Canine Rights and Bad Hair
Written by Jason Parsley, South Florida Gay News
October 3, 2012
Protecting LGBT employees from discrimination would be like protecting pet lovers from discrimination.
That’s what the assistant city manager of Boca Raton thinks.
Mike Woika was trying to make a point — saying if the city were to
adopt an ordinance protecting LGBT employees, then who knows what other
classes of people would crawl out of the woodwork demanding their
rights, too.
“What’s to keep other groups from wanting to be protected?” Woika
said. “How about me? I’m a pet lover. I think should be included in your
anti-discrimination law. Someone who has dogs should not be
discriminated against either.”
The issue of gay rights in Boca Raton was thrust into the spotlight
last week when the Palm Beach County Commission was informed that the
City of Boca Raton opted out of the county’s anti-discrimination clause,
which includes both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and
expression.”
Boca Raton doesn’t include either one in its anti-discrimination
policy, instead deferring to the state and federal requirements.
The county meanwhile has a policy stating that it doesn’t do business
with entities that won’t adhere to their anti-discrimination policy.
The ‘business’ happens to be a regional plan for the county to pay for
the costs of hazardous material emergencies in some of its cities, one
of which being Boca.
But the county can’t save the city the $235,000 that the project is
worth without adherence to its anti-discrimination policy. Now, Boca has
60 days to change its ways, or it loses out on almost a quarter of a
million dollars.
Woika stressed that regardless of what people are protected, the City
does not discriminate against anyone whether or not they are a part of a
protected class.
But the issue gets even stickier.
Besides just not including “sexual orientation” and/or “gender
identity and expression,” in its policies, in January 2011 Boca decided
to take the unusual step of officially opting out of the county’s
anti-discrimination requirements.
Woika simply called that vote a reaffirmation.
The only other city to have taken that step is West Palm Beach. The
difference though is that WPB includes “sexual orientation,” and “gender
identity and expression” as a part of their protected classes.
Rand Hoch, president of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council
has said he’s been approaching Boca Raton for more than 20 years urging
them to add sexual orientation to their anti-discrimination requirements
as well as offer city employees domestic partnership benefits.
Tony Plakas, the executive director of county’s GLCC, Compass,
believes the opt out was done covertly and wonders if the City Council
understood at the time the real impact of it.
Or was this something pushed for by the city management?
“This is a great example of things happening behind the public’s back
and they don’t know about it,” he said. “Maybe they did think it was
just housekeeping. But again it doesn’t matter. The motivation was to do
it quietly.”
Woika, though, said the opt out came about because this isn’t the
first time Boca has run into a problem with the county’s
anti-discrimination requirements.
“There was a formal affirmation of the opting out. Because the city
is under home rule it has established its own anti-discrimination
[requirements]. There was always a conflict with the county,” Woika
said. “I think when they legally adopted their own, that really was an
opt out. But the city said ‘let’s make it very clear.’”
Last time around, though, the project fell through, Woika said, before the city and county came into conflict.
The current issue became muddied after Palm Beach County Commissioner
Steve Abrams, whose district includes Boca, stressed to the commission
that Boca only had a problem with adhering to the “gender identity and
expression” requirement. He said they didn’t have a problem with the
“sexual orientation” requirement.
Abrams then attempted to persuade the commission to give Boca an
exemption, which it declined. Boca will now have 60 days to accept the
county’s proposal or decline it and lose the funding.
Later, when Abrams realized that “sexual orientation” wasn’t a federally or state protected class, he wrote in an email:
“I want to state that the city manager advised me, as Boca’s district
commissioner, only about their concerns regarding the gender identity
and gender expression clauses. I have no knowledge concerning their
position on sexual orientation, which they did not raise with me.”
Woika said when Boca Raton opted out of county’s ordinance, they made
it clear they would only follow state and federal requirements
regarding discrimination.
Rand Hoch summed it up differently.
“What they are saying is that they wish to retain the right to
discriminate against gay men, lesbian and transgender people. ‘We want
to be able to preserve the right to discriminate,’” he explained. “No
one else in Palm Beach County tried to opt out, except for West Palm
Beach, which had its own law before the county had a law.”
SFGN reached out Boca Raton Mayor Susan Whelchel for a comment, but as of press time received no response.
Gender Identity and Expression
At the Palm Beach County Commission meeting Commissioner Steve Abrams
defended Boca Raton’s right to opt out of the county’s
anti-discrimination policies and claimed protections for gender identity
are not a “settled area of law” and the city did not want open itself
up to liability.
He also made this comment:
“Someone could sue because the entity doesn’t like the way their hair
is styled or how they dress or something like that so I’m just
explaining the basis of the city’s objection.”
Michael Keeffe, Executive Director of Transaction Florida, the only
statewide trans organization, took issue with Abram’s comments.
“My first response to that is it’s just ludicrous. That’s an
uneducated statement. These kind of comments come from a fear of cross
dressers or fetish type of people will want to come in on different days
and dress differently. One day as John and one day as Jane,” he
explained. “This is about people who live full time as a certain
identity. This is people like myself who was born as one sex, but live
my life as the opposite of that, on a full time basis.”
Keeffe said more than dozen cities across the state now offer protections for “gender identity and expression.”
Three of those cities are in PBC and include West Palm Beach,
Wellington and Lake Worth. The County and School District of Palm Beach
County also includes it. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton’s
largest employer, already includes “sexual orientation” in its equal
employment opportunity policy for employees and anti-discrimination
policy covering students. FAU will consider adding “gender identity and
expression” later this year.
Gay Rights in Palm Beach County
The Palm Beach County Human Rights Council and its president Rand
Hoch has been surprisingly successful at getting the county and
municipalities to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity and
expression” to their anti-discrimination requirements as well as getting
some of them to offer domestic partnership benefits to their employees.
But one city where they’ve had almost no success is Boca Raton, whom Hoch said has been less than receptive.
Here are a few facts when it comes to gay rights in Palm Beach County:
West Palm Beach was the first city in Florida to enact an Equal
Opportunity Ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual
orientation in employment, housing and public accommodation. And that
was in 1994. In 1995 a strong effort was made to repeal the law, but the
voters upheld it with 56 percent. Even smaller cities in the county
have been more progressive on gay rights than Boca.
Lake Worth is home to one of the Southeastern United States’ largest
gay and lesbian community center, Compass. And Lake Worth was the first
city in Florida to raise the gay flag during the week of Compass’
PrideFest, a tradition that started in 2000. Lake Worth also had no
problem hiring a transgender city manager.
In addition to all of the larger cities in Palm Beach County (except
for Boca) offering some type of protections or benefits for the LGBT
community, many smaller county municipalities also offer such
protections. A few of those include Belle Glade, Hypoluxo, Lake Park,
Manalapan, Royal Palm Beach South Bay, and Tequesta.
Additionally, the county and school district offer protections and
benefits for the LGBT community as well as the Office of the Clerk and
Comptroller, Office of the Property Appraiser, Office of the Public
Defender, Office of Supervisor of Elections, Office of the Tax
Collector, Children Services Council, Palm Tran, Solid Waste Authority
and South Florida Water Management District.
http://www.southfloridagaynews.com/news/local-news/7421-boca-raton-officials-compare-lgbt-equality-to-canine-rights-a-bad-hair.html
[for the hazardous waste removal] but they won't do anything about
discrimination" against gays, lesbians or transgender employees, Hoch
said. "Until they change their minds, we at the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council are going to mark Boca Raton as a city run by bigots."
