The New York City Commission On Human Rights has officially banned willful misuse of gender pronouns as part of a new update to the city’s 1945 Human Rights Law.
The new guidance, released on December 21, will fine employers, landlords and service providers up to $250,000 for deliberately addressing individuals by the wrong name or gender pronouns. New York City defines “gender” as one’s “actual or perceived sex and shall also include a person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.”
The new guidance can impose a civil penalty fine “up to $125,000 for violations, and up to $250,000 for violations that are the result of willful, wanton, or malicious conduct.” The penalty amount will be determined based on the severity of the violation, a history of previous violations, knowledge of the NYC Human Rights Law and the violating company’s size.
While many states are still struggling to catch up to this standard, New York has had the Gender Expressions Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) floating around the state Assembly and Senate since 2003. Although GENDA has yet to receive a vote on the Senate floor, this update was most likely added as a way of protecting transgender individuals from unfair discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
This new guidance is a huge win, especially for the 25,000 transgender individuals living in New York City.
The full statement is worth a read, particularly for those looking further clarification.
Related: Parents Of Transgender Son Share Their Emotional Story With Inspirational Mini-Doc
Anthony Lower
So if I say “gurl, hurry your ass up” to someone presenting as male, I’m open to being sued?
Brian
The New York City Commission on Human Rights should be disbanded. It is ridiculous. If it’s trying to ban free speech, there is no way its actions are going to stand up in court. Go away, NYC Commission on Human Rights. You are a joke.
Tommy O'Brien
Ridiculous
MacAdvisor
As much as I favor using the pronoun of choice, this law is blatantly and clear a violation of the First Amendment. While business speech enjoys less protection than personal speech, this law is simply too vague for enforcement. Given “he” is the gender neutral pronoun in English, even calling a female-identifying person by it is correct English, I am not sure businesses are even on notice when to use what.
A bet of a Double-Double meal at In-N-Out Burger this law doesn’t survive its first encounter with a court.
Xzamilio
It’s things like this that give people like Donald Trump the support they needs. Why? Because even if everything the idiot says is ignorant, abrasive, and offensive, it’s the fact that he is unapologetically anti-PC and doesn’t care. I don’t know… this seems to be going in a bad direction. I get it in theory, but in practice? We’ll see.
robho3
This is ridiculous.
Captain Obvious
@Anthony Lower: PC cuts both ways, gurl. That’s why I don’t always disagree with Republicans on everything even if the majority of them are idiots. Simple is best when it comes to the government. The more we muddy the waters with “change” without thinking them through the more unnecessary garbage we put ourselves and everyone else through.
Teachers can’t hug their kids anymore. That says it all right there. Laws are getting out of control and still aren’t solving anything in most cases considering all the people getting off for actual murders, hate crimes, etc.
billjones
I guess they haven’t heard of the 1st Amendment.
Masc Pride
Waste of time. All they’d have to do is contest the fine and bring a dictionary to court. The whole thing is also really ambiguous, so a counter claim would probably be an easy win.
Giancarlo85
@Captain Obvious: So what are republicans right about? Complaining about laws? Republicans ought not to throw stones from a glass house. they would make homosexuality illegal… so stop BSing.
oddchild1
So all you people bitching about this new addition; I guess you have a problem with the cops use of faggot being taken into consideration in this case since doing so violates their freedom of speech http://www.queerty.com/nypd-officers-assault-and-mace-openly-gay-man-call-him-faggot-20130610 heck by your logic Kathryn Knott’s history of homophobic speech shouldn’t be taken into account in her case since it violates her freedom of speech.
Captain Obvious
Whew lawd this no life troll is hellbent on responding to every one of my personal opinions.
inbama
Every group has gained rights and respect in this country relied on our Constitution’s protections of Free Speech.
Transgender activists are the first to use the opposite approach and achieve their goals by actually eliminating free speech.
That GLAAD has even intimidated respected newspapers into using imbecilic phrases like “assigned at birth” should make us all feel ashamed.
Chris
Wow; this is simply breath taking in its over-reach. Since even worse speech cannot be banned, I see no way that this is anything but a symbolic victory. ….. Let the countdown to an ACLU-sanctioned action begin.
Daniel-Reader
Read what it is. Proper name is the person’s legal name. Gender pronouns are she, he, and gender possessive pronouns are hers, his. Words like Gurl and Dude are not proper names or pronouns, so they aren’t in the law. Also, you have to be an employer, landlord, or service provider to run afoul of it, so typical, out-and-about people aren’t even covered by it – only those affecting employment, housing, and public accommodations.
Daniel-Reader
Also, courts have recognized since nearly the start in the USA that the time, place, and manner of Free Speech can be legislated and that Free Speech is not limitless (examples: you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater, you can threaten specific individuals by name, you can go to jail for soliciting murder or assault, etc.). These are Time-tested concepts in US law.
Daniel-Reader
should read: …canNOT threaten specific individuals by name…
Glücklich
Can anyone imagine what a joyless buzz-killington militant-vegan PETA trigger warning microaggression anti-everything workplace NYCHRC must be?
Hey NYCHRC, I’m a human and I have a right to walk the streets of New York without having to dodge so freakin’ many fetid, rancid piles of human feces befouling the sidewalks, not to mention the piles of poop they leave.
Goddammed useless mayor de blabbio…
Giancarlo85
@Daniel-Reader: Right. Ohio vs Brandenburg. Freedom of speech has limits.
Giancarlo85
Correction: Brandenburg v Ohio. Always matters which way the order is in. The first is the Plaintiff and the second is the defendant.
The Brandenburg test:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test#
This is pretty much the standard rule the court applies today. Now I never said if I was supportive of this NYC law. If we apply the Brandenburg test though, it appears as if this law may be overbroad and stretching the limits of legality. I do not think this law could stand up in Court honestly.
onthemark
@Captain Obvious: Geico’s latest commercial:
If you’re Giancarlo85, you bitch a lot. That’s what you do.
onthemark
@Daniel-Reader: Don’t forget libel.
onthemark
@Daniel-Reader: “you have to be an employer, landlord, or service provider to run afoul of it”
In printed matter this wouldn’t be hard to follow at all. Everything could easily be changed to an inelegant, distant, but legal “he/she/they” and so on.
Giancarlo85
@onthemark: Enough of this ignoring nonsense.
What is your problem? I am not saying anything to you. Just drop it already!
Giancarlo85
@Captain Obvious: Coming from the guy who is on here at all hours… The irony.
onthemark
@Giancarlo85: The ignoring “nonsense” was YOUR idea, remember? Yesterday in another thread, you lied that I had threatened to have you “taken out” (in quotes), i.e., that I had threatened to have you killed. Yet again you forget Google exists; no such quote exists. That’d be libel if you knew my full name (even in the U.S. where libel is tough to prove). And here you’re parading around as a legal expert.
I agree with you that this law is probably “overbroad” as you say. It just seems that you are exactly the type of person who would make a bitchy ridiculous complaint using a law like this!
Giancarlo85
@onthemark: Oh keep it up with your bullshit. I said I wasn’t in favor nor would I use this law. Grow the fuck up for goodness sakes. This schtick is getting tiresome. And no, not libel. Get a reality check!
Giancarlo85
You drag your vindictive hate from article to article. You did it here. You have some major problems. Totally unhinged.
onthemark
@Giancarlo85: Here’s a reality check. You have terrible trouble keeping track of who is who here, and you get everyone here mixed up with everyone else, and in this case you had me confused with “SeeingEyeDog” or whatever his name was. And even then, you know you’re not supposed to put quotation marks around something unless it’s an EXACT quote. No one here ever threatened to have you “taken out” – we’d all remember that if someone did! – so when you lie and declare that somebody said “x” when they didn’t, you can expect people to object.
Kenneth Andrews
Gender Terms are too difficult to keep up with. I find it much easier to use It, That, Thing, ect. Much easier to remember.
Captain Obvious
@onthemark: I think he’s a legit crazy person living out a “social life” through this blog by attacking random people for no real reason. It would be sad if he wasn’t such a dick.
Giancarlo85
I never had you confused with anyone. I know who I am talking towards. You seem to be extremely unhinged. You are no longer interesting. You bore me.
Giancarlo85
@Captain Obvious: And what exactly is your purpose on here? You always attack people. Stop throwing stones from a glass house!
onthemark
@Captain Obvious: Giancarlo believes posting at 1am = bad, but posting before work at 5am = virtuous! And posting at 4am = even more virtuous. This is a peculiar SoCal snobby attitude that I’m familiar with from growing up there. As for social life, they tend not to have much. It’s not just Giancarlo. They’re an early-to-bed, early-to-rise bunch out there (even the celebrities, compared to NYC). If Giancarlo really does still have a job, he probably has a very long commute and brags all the time about how long and awful his commute is.
Also he USED to brag to us that he never, ever posted from his job or his phone. Back then there was a furious barrage of early-am Giancarlo posts, and then 10 hours later another furious barrage lasting most of the night. But notice that recently, he posts a lot from his phone and always needs to correct the auto-correct. So another pious virtue has bitten the dust. This trajectory indicates it’s only a matter of time before he starts to text Queerty from heavy traffic on the 405 or wherever, and then we’ll suddenly never hear from Giancarlo85 again!
onthemark
@Giancarlo85: So if you know who you’re addressing, stop lying. If you’re smart enough to cite Brandenburg v. Ohio, you’re smart enough to know how quotes are properly used. And you should be smart enough to use Google instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. So stop misattributing quotes. Stop making up vile quotes that nobody ever said. Stop accusing people of political beliefs that they’ve never stated. Stop lying about what YOU yourself wrote just a few hours earlier in the very same comment thread! (This last bad habit of yours, beyond all others, flabbergasts me.) Keep in mind that anyone can cite, verbatim, the ridiculous or repulsive things YOU write here.
Captain Obvious
@onthemark: Oh I know all about those seedy LA types who’ll do anything and everything hoping to land ass up on a casting couch. Lived in that horrific place for 3 years because I thought it would be a fun place to live if you had no Hollyweird aspirations. Couldn’t have been more wrong. Plastic people, plastic town. Nothing but wannabe Barbie and Ken dolls who move all the way out to LA just to find out that in LA they’re average at best. Then they turn into angry little demons because they can’t live out their celebrity fantasies so they have to get nasty with the rest of us to feel superior and better about how their vapid little lies(“lives”) turned out.
I didn’t know being LA “average” was considered ugly in LA but all the little Barbie and Ken dolls are driven crazy by finding out they no longer turn heads.
After finding out this little troll was even from LA it all made “sense” as much sense as a person being crazy can make anyway. Previously he told me he was from Brazil and threw a hissy fit when I said Brazil had color issues(a known fact).
Clearly LA isn’t working out for him so he comes here starting fights to vent. I can almost understand though because LA could even drive a sane person with no interest in Hollywood to insanity. So those little idiots who really crave that “life” really lose their pea sized minds to the realization that their Hollywood dreams will never happen.
If he’s even LA average though he should be busy enough dating/screwing all the other vapid Ken dolls and working as a barista to pay overpriced rent(with like 2-5 roommates) that he wouldn’t have time to post here as much as he does. I’m gonna assume he’s really not even LA average then which is average everywhere else. Meaning he’s invisible in LA and totally miserable. That makes much more sense.
Giancarlo85
*huge yawn*
Oh look his posts disappeared again… I can’t see them anymore.
What a tremendous bore. This guy is about as exciting as the Kardashians. Can somebody pass the popcorn? This is almost as bad as recent Jim Carrey movies. Offthemark is truly vile and disgusting…. but also incredibly boring. I find myself literally yawning when reading his posts.
Very incredibly predictable.
@Captain Obvious: Blah blah blah blah… more of the same crap about people in California. You seem to be full of stereotypes about LA. Not everybody is into the Hollywood/WEHO scene here. And I’m not really. I work and pay my bills. I don’t a judgmental little clown like you telling me what I should or shouldn’t do.
LA is working out just fine for me. New full time job, living in a good area and having good friends.
It’s interesting you talk about LA average… when you never actually been to LA. Your stereotypes are stupid. Just like the rest of this stupid shit you wrote on here.
Enjoy the little town you live in out in the middle of nowher. Gay people like you are invisible in those little towns. I never said I was from Brazil, you fucking moron.
Oh and Happy new Year!
Giancarlo85
@Captain Obvious: You’re so stupid and brainless. Have you ever been to LA? Where do you get these stupid stereotypes? Most people in LA work and don’t bother with Hollywood, you weak little man. You are all about being invisible and being in shame your entire life.
You’re a blithering fool. Everything you say indicates you have no real intelligence. But please, continue loving life in that little shit town you live in…
onthemark
@Captain Obvious: Ha. Here he is posting at 11:15pm on NEW YEAR’S EVE! And posting at a quarter to midnight on another Queerty thread (see the trans slasher). Apparently all that fabulous L.A. nightlife & his imaginary boyfriend & “good friends” &/or Ryan Seacrest weren’t doin’ it for him. He just couldn’t stay away from Queerty. Couldn’t even pretend to stay away for a few hours, couldn’t even pretend to have a life, after he made such a hysterical fuss about the unremarkable fact of you posting at 1am on an ordinary weekday.
What a pitiful pathetic hypocrite and loser Giancarlo is. Oh and he’s back to that ignoring “nonsense,” as he himself put it earlier in THIS very comment thread.
Giancarlo85
The raving idiot is back at it. I was on my phone, you pathetic old man. You are nothing but a lonely loser who has to take out all your shortcomings onto others. And here is a new flash. I wasn’t out last night. And I do have a boyfriend. I was with his family that night having dinner. Not every night requries going out and spending a ton of money. You can’t fix stupid and a braindead fool like you is a good example why. Continue being lonely and miserable, off the fucking mark.
Giancarlo85
And I posted twice. Big deal. This loser will always find something to complain about. He is one sorry bitter lonely man who hasn’t even been with another guy in decades. Nobody will pay attention to him anymore. So what does he do? He attacks younger people on a website. You are so pathetic and disgusting.
onthemark
“Big deal.” Well YOU made a big fucking deal out of Captain Obvious posting at 1am on an ordinary day, when there’s absolutely nothing unusual about that. The point is your hypocrisy.
And again with the ageism. Sentra will be thrilled, or whoever your employer is. Anyway, you’re the one who’s young (or pretends to be) but you have nothing better to do on New Year’s Eve than have dinner with your in-laws? That’s just SAD.
“I was on my phone.” That’s worse! Way, way worse. You’re so addicted to Queerty that you can’t even go to dinner for a few hours without checking it on the phone?… not only checking in but posting twice, at considerable length? You have seriously crossed the line into mental illness!
Giancarlo85
What a big fucking bigot.
For one, New Years isn’t that special. Christmas is more important. And no he wasn’t posting on an “ordinary” day. All I did last night was watch a movie at my boyfriend’s parents and ate pozole. That was it.
And keep up the bigoted threats. You know you’re dangerously unhinged.
I’m sorry you’re all alone. That isn’t my fault. Do you even have family or do you live in a rundown apartment? Does anybody ever even visit you anymore? That’s so sad! I posted twice. And no, not at considerable length as I don’t want to use up all my bandwidth. AT&T isn’t cheap.
You’re so screwed up beyond belief. You need to be committed to a proper institution.
You are a HORRIBLE DISGUSTING human being. And there was no ageism. I’m just saying you’re a bitter old man who hasn’t had anyone to love in decades.
Giancarlo85
And you know what’s sad… you constantly trying to degrade me. You’re a nasty person in every respect. You’re a true bigot and bully. You will keep on failing in everything you do. I don’t care what you say. Disgusting bigot.
And New Year’s Eve is just like any other day to me.
You constantly attack my own life like you know anything about me. Seriously go fuck yourself.