Council provides ‘basic human rights for almost everybody’

Albuquerque City Councilors passed an amendment to the city’s Human Rights Ordinance to prohibit discrimination based on mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, or conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth.  

The amendment is an update to the city’s Human Rights Ordinance to match the State of New Mexico’s Human Rights Act, Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn said at the May 6 council meeting. 

“The state, a couple of years ago, updated the state-wide Human Rights ordinance. What this does is bring us up to the level of the state,” she said. 

Fiebelkorn said the city is required to follow the state law anyway but by approving the amendment, it affirms that it believes in basic human rights and the ability to enforce the ordinance’s provisions. 

“While I would like the city to be on the forefront and the first one to do this, I think now it’s just a point of catching up with the state and making sure we have local enforcement opportunities,” she said. 

Long Time Coming

Anami Dass, chairperson of the city’s Human Rights Board told City Desk ABQ that this is something the board has been advocating for for dozens of years. 

“We finally have those in the city ordinance. All of those protections are already listed in the state law and I believe all of them are in the federal law as well, but now the city is able to offer its Office of Civil Rights and the discrimination complaint process to cases relating to those now prohibited forms of discrimination,” Dass said.

Controversy

Council President Dan Lewis asked if the city would be able to use state law to enforce human rights. Assistant City Attorney Julia Ronquillo told him that the Human Rights Board was tasked with the Human Rights Ordinance for the city — not the state equivalent.  

Councilor Dan Champine made an amendment to strike the words “sex assigned at birth,” because those words aren’t in the state statute. 

“It’s not mirroring. It’s adding to more than what the state is. If we’re truly mirroring what the state has to say, this sex assigned at birth is not in the state law,” he said. 

Champine said it doesn’t make any sense to make the Human Rights Ordinance longer than it needs to be and to go further than what the state legislature already has. 

“It’s already covered. I don’t believe the additional definition is necessary to accomplish the goal of protecting people based on gender or gender identity,” he said. 

Ronquillo clarified that the term “sex assigned at birth” is included in the state’s definition of gender identity, but that’s the only place that the words “sex assigned at birth” appear in the New Mexico Human Rights Act. 

City Chief Administrative Officer Dr. Samantha Sengel also confirmed to the council that the term “sex assigned at birth” is within the New Mexico Human Rights Act but the city’s ordinance defined the term and the state’s statute is not defined for enforcement purposes. 

Champine’s amendment to take out the “sex assigned at birth” verbiage passed on a 5-4 vote with the sponsors of the original measure, Councilors Fiebelkorn, Nichole Rogers, Joaquín Baca along with Klarissa Peña casting the votes against the amendment. 

After the amendment vote, the amended ordinance was up for a vote and passed unanimously with Fiebelkorn saying the measure gives “basic human rights for almost everybody.”