Washington Blade – Lou Chibbard Jr.
Activists see pattern of discrimination in city detention facilities
Two transgender women said they plan to file a discrimination complaint against the District?s Department of Corrections after officials at the D.C. Jail refused to allow them to visit inmates because of their personal appearance.
Gigi Thomas, a client advocate for the local group HIPS, which provides services to local sex workers, and Tiffany Everlasting, a HIPS volunteer, said jail officials told them they could not enter the jail because they wore women?s clothes but lacked identification classifying them as biological females.
The two women said they appeared separately and at different times on May 30 at the visitor?s reception desk of the Correctional Treatment Facility at 19th and D streets, S.E. The facility, known as the CTF, is operated privately under a Department of Corrections contract with the Corrections Corporation of America, a firm that operates prisons throughout the country.
An official with the D.C. Office of Human Rights said the action by the jail appears to violate the city?s Human Rights Act, which bans discrimination against transgender people. The act covers city government agencies as well as the private sector, including private employers.