Elizabeth Cooper proposes amendments to Intro 131

Good afternoon, and thank you so much for this opportunity to testify, Councilmember Caban, for your initial interest in sponsoring this bill and in being so supportive of the Fordham Law Clinic all along the way.

It brings all of us great pride, so thank you.

And I also want to say that I'm a very grateful constituent of Councilmember Hanif, so very glad to have this opportunity today.

I join my colleagues in their wholehearted support of Intro 131.

And on behalf of my colleagues at Interact, who have been just wonderful community partners for the last two years,

I actually want to raise two straightforward amendments that will ensure that the human rights law thoroughly protects against discrimination based on gender, particularly for people with intersex traits.

I encourage council members to follow along with the handout that we just distributed.

First, as drafted, the bill would prohibit discrimination based on sex characteristics, including intersex traits.

That's how it currently is.

We encourage the committee to define the term intersex traits to do so explicitly as innate

variations in an individual's physical sex characteristics, including internal or external anatomy, hormone production, hormone response, or chromosomes that may not reflect typical or binary notions of male or female development.

This is a widely accepted medical definition, and as a term intersects is not yet commonly understood, including it will help prevent any confusion or unnecessary disputes.

Second, we encourage the committee to move the phrase that currently concludes Section 8102's definition of gender, regardless of the sex assigned to that person at birth, to earlier in the definition.

We are concerned that its current placement may be read to apply only to gender identity and expression,

the part of the definition of gender that immediately precedes this modifier, rather than more broadly to all of the terms under gender.

Although a narrower interpretation would be counter to the tendency to read civil rights statutes broadly, it would be prudent to avoid any potential misunderstanding.

Therefore, if adopted, the amended section would read, the term gender includes, regardless of the sex assigned to that person at birth, colon,

actual or perceived sex, semicolon, sex characteristics, including intersex traits, semicolon, and gender identity and gender expression, including a person's actual or perceived gender or

related self-image, appearance, behavior, expression, or other gender-related characteristics.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak before you today.

If you have any questions, happy to hear them.