Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Topics

Topics

The State and Human Rights


City officials complain constantly that they cannot do what they need to do because of constraints imposed by Albany or due to a lack of legislation that only the state legislature can pass. But in the area of civil rights, New York City has gone far beyond what Albany has been willing to do -- and Albany is being pushed to go further. Funding for the state Division of Human Rights is shaping up to be an issue in this yearês gubernatorial campaign.

The New York State Human Rights Law forbids discrimination in jobs, housing, and public accommodations on the bases of age, race, creed, color, national origin, sex or marital status. The city law is much broader. It covers actual or perceived race, creed, color, age, national origin, alienage or citizenship status, gender (including sexual harassment), sexual orientation (including gender identity or expression), disability (including HIV/AIDS), status as victim of domestic violence, arrest or conviction record, and marital status. When cities around the state enact their own human rights laws, they must cover at least as much as the state covers but they may go further, as New York City has.

There have been many attempts to expand the coverage of the state human rights law, including an Assembly bill to forbid discrimination on the bases of height or weight (something the city does not cover but other jurisdictions do). Even a Children's Bill of Rights has been proposed for the state constitution. But these efforts have gone nowhere.

Given all the coverage that already exists in the state and city human rights laws, many civil rights groups and political leaders are focused on enforcement and implementation. In the city, Patricia Gatling, the new Human Rights Commissioner, has zeroed in on reducing the backlog of cases. Her initial goal of addressing all back cases by May has been extended to September, but she says that 1,750 complaints have been reviewed and 1,200 closed since she came on board this year. After losing 75 percent of its staff during the Giuliani years, the commission is slowly coming back.

The backlog of cases at the state level has emerged as an issue in this year's race for governor. The National Organization for Women's state chapter has had a lawsuit against the governor and the State Division of Human Rights since Mario Cuomo was governor over the inadequate funding for the division and the backlog of more than 10,000 cases. Complainants often wait seven to ten years before their cases are heard, if they are heard at all. The slow pace of the lawsuit led the women's group to support legislation to overhaul the division, but it was one of the many bills that died in Albany.

Comptroller H. Carl McCall served as State Commissioner for Human Rights under Governor Cuomo. Now that he is running for governor, he is making an issue of the breakdown of the state human rights agency, as is his Democratic rival, Andrew Cuomo. Both called for tripling the funding for the agency last January (from $12.7 million to $37 million), though Pataki's increase was about $35,000

For more than 30 years, legislators from the city have fought a losing battle to add sexual orientation to the state law. Led by out lesbian Assembly Member Deborah Glick (D-Greenwich Village), that bill has passed the Assembly by increasingly lopsided margins for more than ten years. But the Republican-controlled Senate has refused even to vote on it. Governor George Pataki pledged last year to "do all in my power" to pass the state gay and lesbian rights bill. His failure to produce is being made an issue by the Democratic candidates for governor, who are also pushing for a Vermont-style civil union bill that Pataki does not support.

The city has taken steps to extend rights to domestic partners in ways that the state has yet to. New York City established a domestic partners registry under Mayor David Dinkins in 1993 and since then 17,140 partners have signed up at the City Clerk's office, 31 percent of them in same-sex couples. City workers get domestic partner health benefits. No such registry exists at the state level, but some state employees do get domestic partner benefits.

The state does have jurisdiction over the domestic relations law and the State Health Department has interpreted the gender-neutral law nevertheless to limit marriage to one man and one woman. There was a lawsuit filed in New Jersey to obtain marriage licenses for gay couples, but there is no such active legal case in New York. City Council Member Alan Gerson is preparing a resolution for the City Council to call upon the state to recognize same-sex marriages. State Senator Tom Duane has had a gay marriage bill in the Senate since last year and Assembly Member Dick Gottfried announced June 30 that he will introduce a companion bill to Duane's in the Assembly.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly Gay USA on Channel 35 on Thursdays at 11 PM.

The Rights Of Same-Sex Partners


Larry Courtney lost his partner, Eugene Clark, in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center - and then was forced to move out of the apartment in Manhattan they had shared for 14 years. Courtney could not afford to stay there on a single salary, and few of the agencies that are supposed to help in just such a situation, such as Social Security, recognized the relationship. He has sued the Workers Compensation Board for the $20,000 a year to which a spouse is entitled under such circumstances. "Not having a marriage license was not our fault," he said. Only the State Crime Victims Board offered aid, and then only under an emergency executive order issued by the governor in the wake of the attack.

"After September 11, many domestic partners were shocked and angry to learn that we were without any real protection under the law," Fire Captain Brenda Berkman testified at a recent City Council hearing on the issue. "In fact, we found that the state and city, along with private unions and charities, were denying benefits to the domestic partners of the city's emergency service workers killed trying to save others at the World Trade Center, as if our relationships meant nothing.

"Although I have been paying my pension contributions and risking my life as a firefighter for twenty years, my partner has no entitlement to my line-of-duty benefits."

Like AIDS before it, the tragedy of September 11 has brought renewed attention to the issue of the rights of unmarried "domestic partners."

"People lost their apartments, were unable to pay their bills, lost control of their partnerĂŤs estates, or simply had insult added to their grief," writes Councilmember Christine Quinn (See "Hard Lessons Learned").

Many city businesses already give domestic partner benefits to their employees, but are resistant to government mandates to provide them. Some unions neither offer them nor fight for them. And powerful religious groups in New York oppose any attempt to expand these benefits and thus to redefine what constitutes a legal couple. But the aftermath of the attacks has revived interest in the debate, and made many elected officials in New York City express more sympathy, even if it is not clear what the city government collectively can or is willing to do.

The History of Domestic Partner Benefits

New York City started recognizing domestic partners, gay and straight, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1989, when Mayor Ed Koch issued an executive order granting them hospital visitation rights and death leave. Rudy Giuliani, running for mayor, opposed Koch's move, saying it would cost the city too much. Koch called Giuliani's position "heartless" -- and David Dinkins won the election.

Early in his term, Dinkins set up a domestic partners registry at the City Clerk's office, allowing same-sex couples who lived together and could demonstrate some interdependence, to sign up for a certificate at the City Clerk's office. It did not carry much weight within government at first, but has proved useful for the many corporations in the city, from Merrill Lynch to Disney, that have since begun providing domestic partner benefits to their employees.

But Dinkins, in the midst of one of the city's many budget crises, resisted fulfilling a campaign promise to settle a suit by gay teachers demanding health benefits for their partners. It took him until shortly before Election Day in 1993 to settle that suit, making the domestic partners of all city employees eligible for health benefits. Dinkins, however, lost his re-election bid a few days later, and the winner Giuliani had no commitment to furthering domestic partner rights.

When Giuliani ran for re-election in 1997, he got the Empire State Pride Agenda, the lesbian and gay lobby group, to remain neutral in his race with Democratic candidate Ruth Messinger, a veteran supporter of gay causes, by promising to support a domestic partners bill in the City Council. The 1998 bill that was passed codified the terms of the 1993 court settlement into law, and went through the City Code adding the term "domestic partner" wherever "spouse" appeared. But to Thomas K. Duane, then on the Council and now a State Senator, the changes did not go far enough. He suggested, and would still like to see, the city commit to providing domestic partner benefits to its city employees that are equal to those for employees in marriages - by providing those benefits that the state and federal governments give to married couples but not to gay couples.

On the Table Again

Lambda Legal Defense is representing Larry Courtney and Bill Valentine, who lost his partner Joseph Lopes in the American Airlines crash in Belle Harbor on November 12, before the state Workers Compensation Board. Lambda attorney Adam Aronson said that the governor could do an executive order to open up workers compensation to domestic partners as he did for the Crime Victims Board. Another group called Marriage Equality is working to get New York State to recognize same-sex marriages through litigation or a new law if necessary--something opposed by both Governor George Pataki and his Democratic rivals, Comptroller Carl McCall and Andrew Cuomo. The two Democrats, unlike Pataki, support a Vermont-like civil union law for New York, reflecting an official position of the state Democratic Party.

But what is New York City's role in an area that many believe only the state can resolve?

The City Clerk's office holds that it cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples without the state's permission. That thesis has never been tested, and there is some evidence the city government is relieved to pass the buck to the state: While mayors like Willie Brown of San Francisco and Ken Livingstone of London have conducted union ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples, no New York mayor has ever done so.

Lambda's Aronson believes there is a case to be made for Duane's proposal that the city cover marriage benefits for gay couples that the state and federal governments will not. "We have a non-discrimination law in the city on the basis of sexual orientation that is expansive and inclusive," Lambda's Aronson said. "It says it will cover instances of discrimination where a disparate impact can be demonstrated. A policy that discriminates on the basis of marriage can have a disparate impact." This was shown in Lambda's case against Yeshiva University that denied married housing to domestic partners. The Court of Appeals ruled for Lambda's client in Levin v. Yeshiva because she had no opportunity to marry her same-sex partner and was thus deprived of a service.

The City Council sounds poised to do whatever it can make expand domestic partner rights. "It is unacceptable," said Alan Gerson at the recent hearing "to have the city's post-9/11 unity torn asunder by bureaucratic rulings against domestic partners. We are determined that all domestic partnerships, same-sex or heterosexual, be treated fairly, equally and equitably."

Councilmember Christine Quinn, Duane's successor, concurs. "The Speaker [Gifford Miller] and lawyers to the council now want the most comprehensive domestic partners legislation we can have," which is a shift from the time when Peter Vallone was Speaker of the City Council On the other hand, the other open lesbian on the council, Margarita Lopez, has apologized in public hearings to domestic partner survivors of 9/11 who have been denied benefits, but she is not sure how much the city can do. The council's legal staff, she said, has convinced her that some benefits could only be resolved in collective bargaining. "I've learned that our capacity to affect issues is very limited in the Council unless the Assembly and Senate give us permission," she said. But she is hopeful that the council can fashion some solutions.

The Opposition

The council hearings on domestic partner issues post-9/11 have not attracted the anti-gay opponents who used to come out en masse in the 1970s and 1980s to fight the lesbian and gay rights bill, which finally passed in 1986. The city transgender rights bill, adding "gender identity and expression" to the human rights law, passed in a veritable lovefest, with no one testifying against it and only a handful of council members voting no on it.

But Councilmember Quinn plans next month to introduce a bill that would require businesses and non-profit agencies that have contracts with the city to provide domestic partner benefits. This is sure to be controversial.

Alair Townsend, publisher of Crain's New York Business, has not yet taken an official editorial position on the contractor's bill, but did say that measure's like this were "more about making council members feeling good," than enacting sound public policy.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already said he is not in favor of Quinn's bill. The mayor wants an exception for religious groups. Indeed, opposition is almost sure to come from some religious groups, which have opposed such measures in the past, as an attack on the traditional family and an effort to weaken marriage.

If those groups that are contractors with the city are required to provide domestic partner benefits, some may comply, others will lose their contracts, and some may choose to sue. The San Francisco domestic partners contractors' law has stood up to court challenges from an airline association. The Catholic Archdiocese there found a way to comply. But the Salvation Army stopped taking city money, forced to by the national office, though the local Salvation Army had offered to comply with the law.

Unions

The city unions have not pushed domestic partners issues. Joseph Mancini of the Police Benevolent Association said that domestic partner survivors are not included in help provided by the union under its Widows and Children Fund.

Tom Ryan, president of Fire Fighters Lesbian and Gay/Emergency Medical Services ( known as "Fire-Flag/EMS") said he has been asking the firefighter's union "to put a bill forward to the state that would include everybody," including domestic partners. "I'm not worried about terrorism," the out gay firefighter said, "I'm worried about my loved ones not being taken care of if I die."

A Change?

Why is there so much talk and movement around these issues now? "After September 11," said Lambda's Aronson, "Americans started thinking of issues as Americans, no longer as black, white, gay, lesbian. For the first time, many heterosexual people understood in a profound way how the law discriminates against gay people and couples." Most of these injustices, he said, could be solved if the state recognized the marriages of same-sex couples.

Richard Haymes of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project told a recent state hearing on these issues at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, "In the aftermath of September 11th, the inequities were compounded and highly magnified. And perhaps because there had never before been such a huge critical mass of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered individuals affected at one time, we at the Anti-Violence Project were heightened in our resolve to ensure the victims of the terrorist attack from our community would not fall through the cracks." Though Haymes's group and the gay lobby Empire State Pride Agenda got some government action and set up a private fund to pay some of what officialdom would not, "in many regards, our efforts were in vain," he said.

The next battles in the conflict over how many rights same-sex couples should have will be played out in City Hall several times before this year is out.

 

The Disabled


There are about 1.8 million people with disabilities in New York City, according to the 2000 census. While things have changed since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, some of these disabled New Yorkers believe that too much remains inaccessible to them, and they are organizing in unprecedented ways. Their focus is on campaigns to improve transportation in a town that is notoriously unfriendly to those with disabilities. They are also trying to secure housing and workplaces that are more easily accessible, and to make the health care system more responsive to their special needs.

TAXIS FOR ALL CAMPAIGN

Some 40 American cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, have accessible taxis. All of London's cabs can accommodate wheelchairs. By contrast, New York City's 12,000 cabs include only five that are accessible to wheelchairs. The "Taxis for All" Campaign is an effort to convince the city to make new yellow cabs and livery car services able to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs. Terry Moakley, associate director of the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association and chair of the campaign, said that the Taxi and Limousine Commission was resistant, wanting to wait until major auto manufacturers built accessible vans. But Moakley says that it can be done right now at a cost of about $6,000 a cab. And Dan Wilson, spokesperson for Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, who has been gathering signatures on a petition as part of the Taxis for All Campaign, said that this could be paid for with some of the money from the sale of new taxi medallions.

The city came up with regulations to begin accommodating the disabled, but September 11th delayed their enforcement, according to Matthew Daus, the chair of the Taxi and Limousine Commission. "Our plan is to enforce these rules by the end of this year," he says. He called the for-hire vehicle industry with its radio dispatch system "the logical starting point." Under the proposal, a livery service wouldn't have to make every vehicle accessible, but would have to be able to secure an accessible car for anyone who needs one. Some of this could be done through subcontracting. The campaign emphasizes that they are talking about new vehicles. "We're not trying to burden someone with an existing vehicle," says Moakley

ACCESS-A-RIDE

While disability rights activists credit the city for making all of its city buses accessible (though not all private ones), the subway system is almost totally inaccessible. Many of the disabled, and not just those in wheelchairs, depend upon the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Access-a-Ride system, where for $1.50 a van will pick the qualified user up and transport them.

The City Council Transportation Committee has held hearings both on the need for accessible taxis and on the Access-a-Ride. Those dependent on the Access-a-Ride service testified to tremendous difficulty in arranging for rides, long waits for pick-ups, and unsafe and uncomfortable vans. "The MTA should be embarrassed," said William Danielson, a businessman who uses crutches to get around. Frustrated users (those not in wheelchairs) often end up having to call a cab to get to their destinations at great personal expense.

"We will be more efficient," promised Howard Ende, Vice-President of the Metropolitan Transit Authority for Paratransit, who said they will be aided with a new computerized scheduling system. "I know there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied, but I also know of satisfied customers."

Getting around New York is the biggest issue for the disabled, "because if you don't have transportation you can't access services or go to your job," said Lisa Geeson, of the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association.

Freida Zames of Disabled in Action is concerned about the new ferries that are planned. "The ones now are not accessible," she said, "and it could be a wonderful way for disabled people to travel to the different boroughs, Jersey, and Connecticut."

OTHER CAMPAIGNS

There are other issues besides transportation. Geeson cited the need for the Board of Elections to make voting booths accessible to the visually impaired, and for the Department of Buildings to enforce the accessible buildings code; Zames said that there "is not enough affordable, accessible housing, nor is it integrated. They keep wanting to put us in ghettoes."

Zames also said her group is focusing on the rebuilding of downtown and the preparations for the potential 2012 Olympics in the city to "see that it is all done in compliance with state, federal, and local disability laws."

Alexander Wood, executive director of the Disabilities Network of New York City, and Nancy Miller from Visions Services for the Blind, called on the Department of Employment to involve more youth with disabilities in the summer employment program.

A new coalition is working to make sure that the efforts to incorporate people with disabilities into their communities become a reality - in other words, that the programs get funded. The New York City Disability Budget and Policy Coalition was formed this year to "achieve fiscal equity for disability-related programs and issues in the New York City budget."

How responsive will city government be to the various campaigns? Several members of the City Council are sponsoring some of them from their offices. As for the Bloomberg administration, Wood and Miller were delighted to have had a meeting with Employment Commissioner Betty Wu. "She was wonderful," Wood said "This is the first time [in 30 years] I had a commissioner meet with me on disability issues."

Zames is less sanguine about the new administration. "We're having a hard time reaching Bloomberg," she said. "But his manner is better than Giuliani's. We were never able to deal with Giuliani."

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly Gay USA on Channel 35 on Thursdays at 11 PM.



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years