Anti-Discrimination Legislation
On February 23, 1984, Montgomery County Executive Charles Gilchrist signed Bill #65-83 into law. The product of years of community organizing, the bill amended the county's anti-discrimination codes to include sexual orientation as a protected category. While opponents mounted a campaign to stop the bill by forcing it to a referendum in the fall, their efforts ultimately failed.
The bill went into effect in September 1984, making Montgomery County the second county in Maryland to provide legal protections to its LGBTQ+ residents.
(The Washington Blade, November 1973)
The Montgomery County Human Rights Commission, the agency responsible for overseeing civil rights, was created in 1960. Two years later, the County Council passed the Equal Public Accommodations Law. In 1967, the county enacted its first Fair Housing Law, and in 1972, an amendment prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex was added to the Public Accommodations Law. The county added sex and marital status to the Housing Law in 1974, and prohibited discrimination based on physical and mental disabilities in 1977.
Efforts to include sexual orientation in Montgomery County's anti-discrimination statutes began in the 1970s. According to the Washington Blade, members of the YWCA and the National Organization for Women attempted to add sexual orientation, parenthood, and income source to pending discrimination legislation in late 1973, but their efforts proved unsuccessful.
The campaign to add sexual orientation to Montgomery County's anti-discrimination laws began to pick up speed in 1980. According to the Washington Post, Jim Mihalik, the chairman of the Human Relations Commission, began lobbying for the change in his conversations with county council members, though progress was slow. Mihalik met with members of the Montgomery County Gay Rap Group and gathered their stories of discrimination.
Founded in 1981 by Robert Mitchell "Judge" Coggin, the Suburban Maryland Gay Alliance (SMGA), later the Suburban Maryland Lesbian/Gay Alliance, was the first political group for gay men and lesbians in Montgomery County. SMGA almost immediately set its sights on Montgomery County's anti-discrimination law.
R.M. "Judge" Coggin, founder of the Suburban Maryland Gay Alliance
On August 30, 1983, three members of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee--Rose Crenca, Michael Gudis, and Scott Fosler--formally introduced Bill #65-83 to add sexual orientation to Montgomery County's human relations code. While the bill would not be voted on until later in the year, supporters were confident that most County Council members would pass it. The exception was William Hanna, who openly opposed homosexuality as a "deviation from the natural" (The Washington Post, 8/31/83).
The first public hearing on the bill was held in November 1983. Few people voiced critiques of the bill at the hearing, but opposition began to mount in early 1984. On February 2, over 150 protesters led by conservative church leaders interrupted a HHS work session.
Despite the disruption, supporters of the bill were not overly concerned. R.M. Coggin told the Washington Blade that SMGA was not "going to try to shout our way on this" and that "the people here [at the work session] presented themselves as fools" (2/3/84, p. 5).
The HHS Committee sent Bill #65-83 to the full County Council on February 6, 1984. After five hours of discussion, the Montgomery County Council passed the bill on February 14. The Council voted 5-0 in favor of the bill, with two abstentions. The final bill included an amendment, introduced by Councilman Hanna, that would permit employers to dismiss or refuse to hire people who advocate homosexuality and whose job demands that they be alone with children of the same sex.
Montgomery County Executive Gilchrist, while noting he did not approve of homosexuality, signed the bill into law on February 23.
County Executive Charles Gilchrist (Montgomery County Government)
(The Washington Blade, 5/11/84)
Opponents to the law quickly mobilized against it. If they could gather enough signed petitions, they could force the county to hold a referendum vote on the law in the fall and prevent the bill from going into effect.
The group Citizens for a Decent Government, which was founded by the Reverend Robert Crowley, spearheaded the referendum campaign. By early April, they had gathered ten thousand signatures and submitted them to the county supervisors of elections. When the May 23 deadline arrived, Citizens for a Decent Government had amassed nearly 24,000 signatures, successfully preventing the rights bill from going into effect.
The Montgomery County elections board verified the signatures in early July. The board reversed its decision later that month due to wording issues in the petitions, but Citizens for a Decent Government successfully appealed the decision to the Montgomery County Circuit Court, allowing the referendum to move forward.
Meanwhile, SMLGA and other organizations led efforts to counter the referendum campaign. In early May 1984, an informal group of supporters, who later came to call themselves the Montgomery County Citizens for Justice, met to plan their strategy. They prepared an educational campaign to rally public support for the bill, and sought to disqualify the petitions on legal grounds.
Attorney Susan Silber led the legal challenge to the referendum. Silber was a prominent figure in LGBTQ+ family and employment law in the area, and she also served as general counsel to the city of Takoma Park beginning in 1981. Silber and other legal experts argued that there were several issues with the petitions that Citizens for a Decent Government had circulated, including that the wording did not follow county protocol and that the language they contained was misleading. In early September 1984, Silber successfully persuaded the Maryland Court of Appeals to hear the case.
Attorney Susan Silber
William Hanna, who had opposed the bill and introduced an amendment allowing discrimination against LGBTQ+ people working with children
On September 14, 1984, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the referendum on Montgomery County's anti-discrimination bill could not be added to the November ballot, allowing the protections to go into effect immediately. Because petitions for referenda were required to be submitted within ninety days of a law's passage, opponents to the bill could not challenge it a second time.
"After spending 20 months on this, it's finally drawing to a close. The tone of [SMLGA's Tuesday] meeting was more elated this time. All our efforts had been aimed at the passing of the referendum; we had basically not looked beyond that issue." (R.M. Coggin, in The Washington Blade, 9/21/84, p. 1)
The city of Gaithersburg adopted the Montgomery County anti-discrimination bill in 1987, and Rockville added sexual orientation to its human rights code in 1990. Both cities were incorporated as separate legal jurisdictions from the county, so the law had not applied to them when it passed in 1984.
In January 1994, the Montgomery County Human Rights Commission introduced legislation to remove the "Hanna Amendment," as it was called, which had allowed discrimination in cases where gay men or lesbians worked one-on-one with children. After several months of deliberation, the amendment was repealed by the County Council in May 1994.