Council fine-tuning human relations law

NORTH WALES >> After hours of debate, down nearly to the letter of the law, a new nondiscrimination ordinance setting up a local human relations commission is nearly ready for North Wales Borough to consider.

“This is more of a neighborhood, ‘let’s get together and see if we can resolve the issue.’ They don’t have the power to subpoena or compel testimony,” said Solicitor Greg Gifford.

“It gives a lot of avenues in this for parties to resolve their issue,” he said.

Borough council started talks in May on whether to pass a local nondiscrimination ordinance modeled after one passed in 2018 in Lansdale, which created a local human relations commission to field and arbitrate complaints of discrimination against local residents, business customers or visitors, with decisions from that

body that could then be appealed into the court system.

Lansdale appointed five residents to their commission in December 2018, after discussion and debate on how those members should be chosen, what qualifications they should have, and how they should

have been vetted and interviewed.

North Wales used that Lansdale ordinance, along with feedback fielded in July from a representative of Governor Tom Wolf’s LGBTQ Affairs Commission, as starting points for a lengthy discussion Tuesday on the finer points of their new proposed code, a draft of which is included in the board’s meeting materials packet for Aug. 13.

Several topics were discussed

and debated, including a request from councilwoman Paula Scott to add political affiliation as a protected class in addition to race, color, religion, and gender identity.

“Political affiliation: in this climate, at this time, people are being discriminated against. There are acts of discrimination, discriminatory acts, that plague various people because of their political affiliation,” she said.

“We’re trying to protect all humans, so why not put this in there?” Scott said.

Councilman Sal Amato questioned whether political affiliation was necessary to include, since one could argue other traits like skin color or gender identity cannot be changed, while political affiliation can.

“It’s usually based on the concept of immutable traits: if a person is disabled, they can’t really change that, or if they’re of a different color,” he said.

“As soon as you change a president, all of the political appointees are thrown out. You could declare that’s political discrimination, but it’s a common practice to do that,” Amato said.

Scott countered that gender identity could also be considered changeable over time, and said she has been accused of being part of hate groups because of her party affiliation.

“I find that quite discriminatory. Even though that’s a verbal act, it is still a discriminatory act. We’re not allowed to call people words that are discriminatory

slurs — that being one of them,” she said.

After further discussion, council President Jim Sando then called for a roll call vote on whether to add political affiliation to the draft, and six council members voted in favor, against only three opposed.

Other changes council members suggested included a reduction from the Lansdale ordinance’s requirement that an employer be defined as anyone working with four or more employees, to reduce that number to one. Another request changed the ordinance language that referenced a definition of “sexual orientation” as “actual or perceived homosexuality, heterosexuality and/or bisexuality” to add language adding those who are intersex.

The Lansdale ordinance requires five residents be appointed to the commission, and several council members suggested that number be increased to seven, with lengthy discussion on whether the code should require those appointees include representatives of different political parties, and/or each of the town’s three wards.

Council ultimately voted against including political affiliation in the criteria, but councilmen Jim Cherry and Ron Little then sparred over whether the background of the applicants should be considered.

“Who’s going to be picking the qualified people? What if my wife, who’s a homemaker, wants to be on

the commission, and is ‘Not qualified?’” Cherry said.

“With all due respect, I’ll take a 25-year HR (human resources) professional over a homemaker,” Little replied, to which Cherry fired back, “but you’re discriminating against the homemaker.”

After further discussion, the board decided not to include any criteria for qualifications beyond living in the borough, and not to include any requirement for wards.

Other discussion topics included whether the commission would receive any formal funding from council, which they decided against for now, and whether to specify that commission members can only field and rule on evidence submitted with a complaint, and cannot seek more information on their own.

“It seems to me that the role of the commission is to hear the case that’s filed before them, and nothing beyond that,” Sando said.

After roughly two hours of discussion and debate spent developing consensus on each requested change, Gifford said the feedback and suggestions from council would be incorporated into an updated draft and brought back for further review at a future council meeting, likely on Sept. 10 or 24.

Several residents shared their thoughts on specific portions of the ordnance, including Austin and Patricia Armstrong, he a former councilman and she a longtime

human resources administrator.

“From the training I’ve delivered, there’s a lot of other categories that you might want to add, including asexual, transgender — you might want to either amend that definition, or put some kind of caveat that ‘it could include some other categories’ at some point,” said Patricia.

She has also received complaints in her HR role from both sides of a dispute, Patricia said, where the person who files a discrimination claim, is then accused by the opposite party.

“In my company, we say that ‘If you have made a complaint in good faith, you cannot be retaliated against.’ However, if you maliciously and deliberately lie, and we can validate that, there are ramifications that happen to that person,” she said.

Resident Andrew Berenson also gave input on several finer points of the draft code, before thanking Sando for fielding and mediating all of the feedback.

“It’s a long process, but he handled it deftly as a gatekeeper,” Berenson said.

“It says an awful lot about our community that we’re willing to work together to get something like this done,” Sando replied.

North Wales borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on Aug. 27 at the borough municipal building, 300 School St.