Hearings on Ohio Fairness Act held in both houses of Ohio Statehouse

COLUMBUS (WCMH) — For the first time ever, the Ohio Fairness Act has had multiple hearings in both chambers at the Ohio Statehouse in the same General Assembly.  

It has been more than 10 years since the effort to get the bill passed started, and only now can they say supporters have been able to testify on the bill in front of lawmakers from both chambers in a General Assembly.  

The work to build a coalition of support has been a slow process that has yielded ever growing results. Last General Assembly the Ohio Chamber of Commerce supported the bill for the first time ever.  

The groups pushing to see this legislation signed into law say they have continued to grow support and are pleased with this momentous occasion.  

But they are not blinded by it either, saying this is by no means a guarantee of victory; in fact they may still be quite a ways off from that.  

Stiff opposition to the bill still exists and is embodied in the group Citizens for Community Values.  

The same group suing the state over the delay in opening the EdChoice voucher application window strongly opposes the Ohio Fairness Act.  

“Our message on this is simple, this bill is so devastating to families and businesses and ministries that it should never get another hearing again,” said Aaron Baer, the president of Citizens for Community Values. “This bill should go nowhere.”  

Baer says that it has had many hearings over its more than 10 year existence and the opposition to the bill has widely been reported on.  

He says, the coverage of their grievances against the legislation has been so extensive lawmakers do not need to hear from them to know where they stand.  

However, he said opponents to the bill would be happy to share their opinions, “anytime, anywhere.”  

And that is what long-time champion State Senator Nickie Antonio wants. She says, the bill cannot address their grievances if they never get to share them.  

She also says, that further hearings in the House could put pressure on the Senate to continue to hold hearings on her bill on that side of the building.  

“If the House is saying that there is momentum and that we’re hearing this bill, then it would seem to me that it makes sense that the Senate should as well,” said Antonio.  

Antonio’s bill in the Senate has had three hearings this General Assembly, one of them only to make changes to the bill and not to hear testimony.  

As is the normal process, Antonio and her joint sponsor were given a hearing to explain the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  

A following hearing allowed for supporters of the bill to share their testimony with the committee, this hearing was closed to cameras that had not previously been approved by the chairman.  

Then work on the bill just stopped in the Senate. Opponents were never given an chance to tell lawmakers why it should not be turned into a law, and it has sat their in limbo ever since.  

In the meantime, the bill was introduced by a bi-partisan duo of lawmakers in the Ohio House of Representatives who were also given an opportunity to explain the bill, this time to the House Civil Justice Committee.  

It was in that committee Tuesday that 11-year-old Sean Miller shared her story with lawmakers.  

I first heard it when she and her mother talked to me before the committee hearing.  

“When I was five years old I hadn’t transitioned yet, so I just had a pink backpack and people thought I was a boy; and a 52-year-old man didn’t like that so he would come to my school, and my playground, and sometimes my house, to tell me that I was bad because of the way I dressed and who I was; and my principal agreed with him; and so, even though the police said that he couldn’t come to my school, she let him,” said Miller. “She told me, “I’m not going to protect you, because there’s no laws in place to do so, so I don’t have to.””  

Miller and her family have since physically moved away from that situation.  

Her mother contacted 20 schools to learn what their LGBTQ policies were and if her daughter would be safe.  

Miller says she feels she isn’t always safe in Ohio, that there are places that do not protect her because of who she is, and that scares her.  

“Everyone deserves basic human rights and it scares me that people can be kicked out of their apartments and lose their jobs just because they’re like me or because they’re LGBT,” said Miller.  

But Baer says the Ohio Fairness Act is not the solution.  

“Nobody wants to see somebody fired because they’re gay,  but the reality is that the proponents of the bill have still not demonstrated that we have this massive epidemic, actually they keep celebrating how many businesses have signed up to support this thing,” said Baer. “If so many businesses are saying we support this bill, they’re clearly not discriminating; so where is the problem.”  

TransOhio and Equality Ohio say the problem is real.  

Citing a survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 30% of transgender Ohioans who participated in the survey who held a job or applied for one in 2015 were fired, denied a promotion, or not offered a job because of their gender identity or expression.  

The survey would go on to note that of the respondents who visited a place of public accommodation where the staff knew they were transgender, 32% experienced at least one type of mistreatment that year; about 16% were denied service, nearly 26% were verbally harassed, and 1% were physically attacked.  

Eleven year old Sean Miller doesn’t want to be attacked.  

She wants to go to school and get good grades so she can get a good job, and not be denied that job or a promotion at it for excelling, because she is transgender.  

In her testimony she asked the House lawmakers to protect her from bullies that would seek to treat her differently than someone else.  

Democrat State Representative Tavia Galonski was moved to tears by Miller’s account of what happened to her, and told her so.  

None of the Republicans on the committee said a word to the child, other than Chairman Rep. Stephen Hambley (Brunswick-R) who dutifully, kept the hearing moving.  

There was one other milestone with the Ohio Fairness Act reached Tuesday.  

It was the first time testimony on the bill was allowed to be streamed live on the internet for all of Ohio to watch if they so choose.  

You can watch the entire committee hearing held on February 4, 2020 here (Testimony on the Ohio Fairness Act begins at the 17:40 mark of the video: