On July 14, all eight members of the San Diego City Council and Mayor Dick Murphy voted unanimously to amend the city’s Human Dignity Ordinance (HDO) to protect the civil rights of transgender San Diegans. The city council must approve the amendment again in a second vote on July 28 for it to become law.

“This is a wonderful day for San Diego’s large transgender community,” said Amanda Watson, co-chair of the HDO Amendment Coalition, which formed in January to press for passage of the measure. “Transgender individuals face severe discrimination and this amendment will finally make that discrimination illegal.”

The HDO, which currently prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in San Diego, was voted into law by the city council in an 8-1 vote in April of 1990. San Diego’s current HDO covers employment, housing, city services, business establishments and educational institutions.

More than 60 other jurisdictions in the United States have passed transgender-inclusive anti-discrimination laws, the most recent of these being Ithaca, New York, which passed the protections July 9. In addition, Hewlett-Packard recently added the words “gender identity/expression” to its non-discrimination and harassment policies.

The HDO amendment adds gender identity, defined as “having or being perceived as having a gender-related identity or expression whether or not stereotypically associated with a person’s actual or perceived sex.”

Should the council vote in favor of the protections again on July 28, San Diego will be the first city to use the word “stereotypically” in its anti-discrimination language instead of the word “traditionally.”

“Using the word stereotypically just gives a little more freedom when you’re trying to present a case,” Watson told the Gay and Lesbian Times. “[It’s easier to] prove that you’ve been stereotyped…. The word traditional is just such a vague word…. A stereotype would be, ‘You’re tall and have broad shoulders, so you’re male.’”

Beyond protections for transgender employees, Watson noted that the amendment would also protect people who don’t meet gender norms. “For example, because of the way it’s worded, a heterosexual woman who chooses to dress more androgynously and doesn’t like to wear makeup — it would also provide protection for that person,” said Watson.

Asked about the type of concerns the protections have raised in other cities prior to passage, Watson said, “A lot of cities seem to fear that there’s going to be an outbreak of cross-dressing. That’s not a reality, but there’s a lot of fears.”

As far as concerns about the potential affect the law might have on companies’ dress code policies, Watson explained, “They’re still required to follow whatever the dress code is, it just has to be appropriate to the gender they identify with. Professionalism still applies.”

Living in Baltimore last year, Watson also worked on the successful effort to add transgender protections to that city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, which passed in December before Watson returned to San Diego.

“We [used] the same type of efforts [in Baltimore] that we’re [using] here,” said Watson, “low-key, no public discussion of things. I mean we’re not trying to hide anything, but you have to guard your interests for the whole community sometimes.

“When [the Baltimore law] passed, we did a huge amount of outreach to make sure people knew what the law was,” added Watson, “So the quietness is really only for the first part — to get the law through.”

San Diego Democratic Club President Jess Durfee, another HDO Amendment Coalition co-chair, also thought it best to move forward in an understated manner, so as not to draw potential opposition from conservatives.

After last November’s elections, in which a progressive majority was voted onto the city council, Durfee said the timing was right to push for the amendment. He and others began meeting with city council members to gauge their potential support. After alerting other community organizations to their plan, the HDO Amendment Coalition was formed and held its first meeting.

Members of the mayor’s LGBT advisory board then broached the idea to Murphy. “Once we understood that the mayor would be supportive, we thought that things should go fairly smoothly,” said Durfee. “He gave us some suggestions on the process to follow, just to streamline it and make it work smoothly…. He was just totally supportive from day one on getting this through the council.

“The only concern we have as we lead up to the actual vote is that Roger Hedgecock or someone like Roger Hedgecock will get wind of it and then do some counter-organizing,” added Durfee, prior to the July 14 vote.

Though the amendment to the HDO had been slated for the document and bumped back previously, it was not on the city’s July 14 docket that is mailed out to news media. A supplemental document, posted on the city’s website, listed the agenda item as an “amendment to the Human Dignity Ordinance … relating to discrimination based on sexual orientation,” though it did not specifically mentioning gender identity protections.

“That doesn’t name anything specific, however we know that folks from the far right monitor that,” said Durfee. “They also monitor some of the San Diego LGBT e-mail listserves, so we’ve been very careful not to have it out there for public consumption.”

A July 16 search of a website belonging to Roger Hedgecock, an antigay San Diego radio host, revealed no opposition to the council vote.

“There’s enough other stuff going on right now with the some of the councilmembers being under investigation, with the recall of the governor, with the budget crisis … that maybe those folks are paying attention to other business and not going to zero in on this one,” said Durfee.

If approved by the city council on July 28, the amendment would become law 30 days later. Prior to going before the council, the amendment to the HDO was sent to the city attorney’s office for legal research and analysis. City Council member Toni Atkins submitted the initial recommendations to City Attorney Casey Gwinn.

“This is an issue of fundamental fairness,” Atkins said in a statement to the Times. “Transgender individuals continue to face severe discrimination based on gender identity and expression, yet they have no protections under current the laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. Laws are needed to provide these protections, and getting the unanimous support of the mayor and council to amend the city’s Human Dignity Ordinance sends a clear message that this type of discrimination is not acceptable.”

The HDO Amendment Coalition also worked with Lisa Mottet, a legislative lawyer for the Transgender Civil Rights project of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.