Dear NYAGRA members & supporters
Dear NYAGRA members & supporters,

Saturday's New York Times carries an article on the settlement in the discrimination cases
that Justine Nicholas & I brought against Advantage Security for different incidents of
discrimination by the same firm.

The one thing that I said to the Times reporter that didn't get into his story (probably
because of space limitations) that I thought was important to mention was that the intake
attorney at the NYC Commission on Human Rights considered my case on its merits
without knowing that I was an activist or knowing anything about my role in the passage
of Int. No. 24 (the NYC transgender rights bill enacted into law in April 2002).

Pauline Park
Co-Chair
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
24 W. 25th St., 9th floor
New York, NY 10010
(212) 675-3288, ext. 338
http://www.nyagra.tripod.com/

_______________________


Transgender Group Reaches Agreement on Restrooms
By Nicholas Confessore
New York Times
April 2, 2005


When Pauline Park watched Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sign an amendment toughening
the city's anti-discrimination laws two years ago, she never expected to become
one of its first beneficiaries.

But yesterday, a complaint filed by Ms. Park - a co-chairwoman of the New York
Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, which helped lobby for the amendment to the
New York City Human Rights Law - became part of the first settlement issued under it. The
amendment forbids discrimination based on sexual identity whether or not it differs
from a person's biological sex.

The settlement, administered by the city's Commission on Human Rights, found that
people working for Advantage Security, a New York security guard company, discriminated
against Ms. Park when they demanded to see her identification after she used a women's
restroom at the Manhattan Mall in Herald Square last April.

She said that she had been having lunch with friends and was "taken aback"
when five guards - four men and a woman - stopped her after she used the restroom
a second time that day. The first time occurred without incident, she said.

"They encircled me in a very menacing and hostile stance," Ms. Park said.

"The female security guard demanded to know, 'Are you a man or a woman?' "
Ms. Park said. "I said to her that I identify as a woman. And she said, 'One
of my colleagues thought you were a man.' "

The settlement also covered a second incident involving the same company at a different
location.

Last March, an Advantage Security guard asked Justine Nicholas for identification
after she came out of a women's restroom in a Manhattan office building where she
was taking the Graduate Record Examination.

Like Ms. Park, Ms. Nicholas was born male but identifies herself and lives as a
woman.

Under the terms of the settlement, Advantage Security will adopt and enforce a policy
allowing people to use bathrooms "consistent with their gender identity,"
said Michael D. Silverman, executive director and general counsel for the Transgender
Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented the two complainants before
the commission. The company will also pay $2,500 to each complainant.

Ms. Park said she was pleased with the settlement.

In a statement released by the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, Ms.
Nicholas said that she had been "humiliated" by the incident and that
the case would "increase the public's awareness of transgender people's needs."

Officials at Advantage Security did not return several telephone calls seeking comment.

The commission's chairwoman, Patricia L. Gatling, said that the settlement "sends
a message that discrimination in any form will not be tolerated in our city."

________________________


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/nyregion/02restroom.html?

photo caption:

Pauline Park, a co-chairwoman of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy,
at the Manhattan Mall, Herald Square, Friday.

photo credit:

Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times