Montgomery County Council Passes Historic LGBTQ+ Bill of Rights

by David King

On Tuesday, October 6th, the County Council unanimously passed Bill 28-20, also known as the LGBTQ Bill of Rights. This bill was presented to the Council on July 7, 2020 by lead sponsor Evan Glass (at-large), the Council’s first LGBTQ member and the Council’s lead on Homelessness and Vulnerable Communities. It has since been co-sponsored by the other eight members of the Council.

This bill defines and prohibits many types of discrimination, including those based upon sexual orientation, gender expression, gender identity and HIV status, in places of public accomodation. This is especially geared towards nursing homes and other care facilities, where many aging members of the LGBTQ+ community have expressed their fear having to hide their identity and orientation in order to ensure that they continue to receive proper care, especially since many of them don’t have children who could care for them instead of healthcare workers in these facilities. In addition, the bill requires these businesses to post anti-discrimination notices.

The bill does not change or create new rights for members of the LGBTQ+ community, but it serves as an affirmation, furthering protections of their rights. It classifies the repeated and willful use of incorrect names and pronouns as discrimination, spells out several potentially discriminatory acts in all healthcare and personal care facilities, and attempts to expand healthcare access to all members of the LGBTQ+ community. 

Several people reached out through public testimony to express their support for this bill. Rev. Dr. Timothy Tutt, Senior Minister at the Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in Bethesda, though noting that the separation of church and state is important, made it clear that he agreed with the bill, expressing his religious beliefs that all people are God’s gifts to creation. Samantha Jones, President of the LGBTQ Democrats of Montgomery County, and the Board of Directors of the MoCo Pride Center both wrote to the Council, expressing their support for the bill and the foundation for security from discrimination that it provided. AARP Maryland also testified in support of the bill, citing surveys that suggest well over half of LGBTQ+ citizens aged 45 or older anticipated having to hide some or all aspects of their identity in order to receive proper care.

In addition, multiple people from the office of County Executive Marc Elrich reached out to express their office’s conditional support for the bill. Fearing the legal ramifications of a couple of phrases in the bill that violated the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections against coerced speech, they proposed a couple of brief amendments to adopt less passive language in order to clarify that business are required to display that it is the law telling them they are barred from discriminating and to state that continuing to use incorrect names and pronouns after being clearly informed otherwise is a form of discrimination. Both amendments passed a vote and are adopted in the bill’s final text.

This bill, the first of its kind to be enacted in Maryland, will now go to the Office of the County Executive to be signed and will take effect 90 days after that signature. It will also be introduced to the Maryland General Assembly in June, where it could possibly become state law.

To read the bill, go to:

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/council/Resources/Files/agenda/col/2020/20201006/20201006_8B.pdf