The professional conference room at the law offices of SmithAmundsen was tight and filled to the brim with professionally attired lawyers and LGBT community advocates eager to hear from the leadership of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations (CCHR).
Titled "Discrimination Laws in Chicago and the Chicago Commission on Human Relations," the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago and the Chicago Bar Association's jointly hosted the event. While slated toward lawyers, the event represented an educational opportunity for those community stakeholders who may not fully understand CCHR's work or, for the more learned, the trends in cases presented to CCHR and the implications for the LGBT community.
"About 11 [percent] to 12 percent of the cases filed are sexual-orientation cases," said Sara Joan Bales, the CCHR's deputy commissioner.
With support from Bales, CCHR Commissioner Mona Noriega oversees one of the nation's pioneering but growing number of municipal agencies in the country whose human-rights ordinances includes sexual orientation and gender identity as two of the 14 fully protected classes.
Originally created in 1947 as the Mayor's Committee on Race Relations, since 1990 the CCHR has exercised the enforcement powers of the Chicago Human Rights and Fair Housing ordinances. CCHR also monitors hate crimes and aids its victims under Chicago's hate-crimes law. In addition to running preventative, education-based intervention programs, the CCHR investigates harassment- and discrimination-related complaints.
The luncheon opened with an overview of CCHR and its many functions before moving on to the mechanics of filing a case; key cases the commission has encountered; and the jurisdictional territories under the different ordinances and laws, including state, county and federal human-rights ordinances.
"CCHR only enforces Chicago's discrimination ordinances," clarified Bales. Those ordinances cover housing, employment, public accommodations, and credit transactions and bonding.
As with the Cook County Commission on Human Rights and the Illinois Department of Human Rights, CCHR claimants have 180 days from the alleged act of discrimination to file a complaint. There is also assistance available at CCHR to help alleged victims file a formal complaint if they are unclear or confused by the process. While CCHR has walk-in office hours, many complaints come to the commission by mail and fax, following the self-preparatory instructions available on the CCHR website ( http://www.cityofchicago.org/humanrelations).
If the claimants proves successful, the board of commissioners may award to a claimant out-of-pocket damages; damages related to emotional distress; attorney's fees and costs; and, in less frequent instances, punitive damages. Those found liable also must pay a fine to the city ($500 per violation) and could experience penalties under other ordinances that could result in the loss of a liquor license or city-contract eligibility. According to Bales, the largest payout was an estimated $300,000, with $140,000 of that being in damages. Of course, most cases aren't going to see those kinds of numbers and proving one's case is not always easy as the burden of proof by "a preponderance of the evidence" is on the claimant.
"It's difficult to prove discrimination without proving intent, but it can be done," Bales told the audience. In Bales' experience, once the CCHR conducts an investigation and decides whether "substantial evidence" of an ordinance violation has occurred and proven valid enough to move forward for a public administrative hearing, "parties often settle."
The challenge is getting injured parties to come forward in the first place. Fear of retaliation, fear of harming their career, or an inability to stick with a case over several years as it goes through the court process prevent many from coming forward with a complaint or completing the process if they do. Bales believed the number of cases CCHR sees is just the tip of the iceberg. Of those she sees, there are certain trends the Commission observed.
"Disparate treatment is the most seen complaint, with harassment coming in second as the most observed," said Bales. "HIV cases haven't been seen with as much frequency in recent years."
After sharing a number of anecdotal stories of successful and precedent cases, Bales took questions, most of which took on a trend of their own.
"How much accommodation can be given to religious groups and religious views?" was the most common question, asked in variations on a theme that belied the current tension between the religious right and LGBT individuals.
However, the response was clear. While these cases can get murky and complex, generally one's religious rights do not trump the housing-, employment- and public accommodation-related rights of individuals, regardless of their relationship to one of the 14 protected classes, including sexual orientation and gender identity (and, by extension, gender expression).
