On February 20, the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee approved a bill that would make it illegal to discriminate “in housing, employment, and public accommodations” on the basis of gender identity, the way it is currently illegal to do so on the basis of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, and so on. But getting it out of committee required a few amendments, including one that altered the bill’s definition of “gender identity.”
As reported at the City Paper, the original version of bill defined “gender identity” as “a gender-related identity, appearance, expression, or behavior of an individual regardless of the individual’s assigned sex at birth.”
The amended version reads, “a persistent, bona fide gender-related identity and the consistent, public manifestation of that identity in the gender-related appearance of an individual regardless of the individual’s assigned sex at birth” (emphasis mine).
All it needs now is a “for real, no fooling” at the end and it should be good to go.
