The Massachusetts Senate voted to expand protections for LGBTQ parents, California secured funds to improve data collection on LGBTQ residents, and the ACLU accused a university in Virginia of discrimination.
Senate Votes to Expand Protections for LGBTQ Parents
The Massachusetts Senate voted to add protections for LGBTQ families to the state’s parentage law.
The bill needs to pass through the state’s House before being sent to Gov. Maura Healey, who has said she will sign it, according to The Hill.
If passed, advocates say the bill would ensure all children have the security of legal parentage, regardless of how or to whom they were born.
Rep. Hannah Kane (R), who introduced the bill alongside Rep. Sarah K. Peake (D), said this bipartisan legislation would uphold a simple principle: “the recognition of legal parentage should not be contingent upon outdated norms or narrow definitions.”
Funds Secured to Improve Data Collection on LGBTQ Residents
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LGBTQ lawmakers in California secured $2.2 million to improve data collection on the health of the state’s residents, according to The Bay Area Reporter.
The funds will help the California Department of Public Health better track the health needs of transgender, gender-nonconforming and intersex Californians.
In turn, state agencies are required to update their public-use forms to be more inclusive of various gender identities, as enforced by a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2023.
The funding is a result of the lawmakers’ attempts to improve the collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data by state agencies.
ACLU Accuses University of Discriminatory Firing
Photo via Ellenor Zinski, Facebook.
Ellenor Zinski, an IT specialist at Liberty University, said she was fired one month after she told the college she was trans, according to ABC 13 News.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on her behalf, stating it was clear the university fired her for being transgender.
“Workplace discrimination against transgender people is against the law, and it’s especially telling that Liberty University sees a practicing Christian’s gender identity as so antithetical to its mission that it was willing to flout the law in order to cast out one of its own,” ACLU of Virginia Senior Transgender Rights Attorney Wyatt Rolla said.
The lawsuit said Zinski would use a bathroom with low foot traffic and “even during hot weather, she wore a branded Liberty jacket to deflect unwanted attention to her body – all out of fear of discrimination.”
When Zinski told Human Resources she wanted to legally change her name, a month of radio silence culminated in a meeting where she was read her termination notice aloud. The termination notice cited “denying biological and chromosomal sex assigned at birth” as the basis for her termination.
