EdgeBoston.com – by Ethan Jacobs – Bay Windows
Advocates debated the efficacy of anti-discrimination laws, one of the sacred cows of the LGBT rights movement, during a Harvard Law School conference on transgender legal issues last weekend.
The debate comes amidst a national discussion about whether to include gender identity language in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and as lawmakers in Massachusetts consider making the state’s non-discrimination laws trans-inclusive. But conference panelist Dean Spade, a teaching fellow at Harvard Law School and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, argued that in practice it is almost impossible to bring a successful case under such laws.