The Journal Gazette, 600 W. Main St., Fort Wayne IN

The Fort Wayne City Council will decide today whether to discuss a bill that would provide even more protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual identity than a similar bill that was pulled last month.

Councilwoman Karen Goldner, D-2nd, said she made changes to the bill to make it more enforceable after her fellow council members, questioned her original draft.

The new bill, which will be voted for introduction but not passage tonight, adds gender identity and sexual orientation into the same protected class as race, religion and others – allowing the city to investigate claims of discrimination.

City law currently allows people who believe a business discriminates against them based on sexual orientation to petition the city’s Metropolitan Human Relations Commission to investigate the complaint. The business can agree to a voluntary mediation process, but if the business rejects it, the process ends. Goldner’s original bill would have put sexual identity into this category.

Gender-identity complaints, dealing with people who identify with a gender other than the one they were born as, or who don’t conform to traditional gender roles, would be handled the same way.

But that bill was pulled from the table last month after Goldner felt she didn’t have the five votes needed to introduce it for debate. That time off allowed Goldner to revise and improve the bill, she said.

While she was hopeful it would get a full hearing, she said she didn’t know whether she had enough support. Regardless, she said she doesn’t plan to withdraw it again.

“I just want this to be voted on,” she said.

The bill also contains less-controversial provisions preventing companies from using a person’s genetic information to discriminate and allowing Metro to investigate disability discrimination complaints without forcing people to prove they have a disability.

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