Oak Park is moving toward adding new language to its human rights ordinance meant to protect the local transgender community.
Oak Park trustees heard a first reading of the proposed ordinance update at their meeting July 1. The proposed update follows calls from Oak Park’s queer community and their allies asking the village to pass stronger measures protecting the local transgender community in response President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting transgender inclusion and healthcare and legislative decisions on gender affirming care in other states.
Village trustees expressed an interest in putting legislation on the books that makes Oak Park a safe place for families with transgender children to move when other states pass laws limiting or blocking access to gender affirming care. Village leaders also said they wanted to be careful to strike a balance between providing meaningful protections and drawing unwanted attention to the local transgender community.
“Oak Park is a community that has the resources to be doing more than just making a statement,” Village President Vicki Scaman said. “We can look at how it is that we can engage further and make sure we are doing this as responsibly as we can.”
The new potential ordinance language includes the assurance that no village staff member or village resources could be used to aid any outside investigation into whether a person had accessed gender affirming healthcare in the past.
“No village agent or agency or using resources or assets belonging to the village may conduct any investigation, detain any person, make any arrest, file any criminal charges, cooperate with any other officer, agent, agency, entity, or department, or participate in any prosecution in which a person or entity is accused of facilitating, providing, or receiving gender affirming care services or products obtained in conformance with the laws of the State of Illinois,” the draft ordinance reads. “The village will object to any subpoena or requests for information from any out-of-state person or entity for the purposes of investigating a law criminalizing gender affirming care as set forth in this article or creates civil liability for gender affirming care.”
Gender affirming healthcare is defined as the “broad approach to health care and support that recognizes and respects an individual’s gender identity” including treatments meant to treat a person’s gender dysphoria, according to the Human Rights Campaign. When it comes to transgender people, gender affirming care can include medical interventions like puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy and surgery.
Twenty-seven U.S. states currently have bans that block gender-affirming care from being prescribed to teenagers, including Indiana, Missouri and Iowa.
This ordinance follows community discussion from Oak Parkers advocating for the village to adopt a “transgender sanctuary” ordinance in light of those out-of-state decisions. Aaron McManus, one of the primary resident voices calling for such an ordinance, thanked the village for its work on the issue but said that this piece of legislation falls short of that goal.
“Although this is a good step in that direction, this is not it,” McManus said. “It does not include things like whistleblower protections, protection for providers, a legal defense fund, a public declaration, civil remedies for harassment, privacy safeguards of records and IT systems or other technology that can be used like surveillance technology that could actually track people. It’s a great start, again, but we still have some work to do and again I would like to advocate for a public declaration of the sanctuary status that Oak Park could be, especially in these times.”
Trustee Brian Straw said that he’d like to see the village put together an official task force with experts who can help create the strongest ordinance possible on this issue.
“I think bringing, bringing a combination of activists and sharp legal minds together to craft a meaningful and effective sanctuary ordinance that will provide protections and have the teeth necessary to ensure that those protections stand up to any challenges that may come before them I think is a way that we can potentially move this forward,” he said. “I think that this is an absolutely vital and meaningful issue today, because the attacks on the trans community and sort of on a national basis are not about to disappear.”
The ordinance will be redeveloped by village staff and brought back for a second reading before it goes before a village board vote. The next discussion on the topic will likely happen before the board goes on hiatus in August.