Here come the grammar police — literally.
Employers, landlords, professionals, and businesses can now be fined up to $250,000 for not using an individual’s preferred name, pronoun, or title — regardless of their sex assigned at birth, according to legal guidance issued by the the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
As noted in a recent legal analysis by First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post, the commission provides the following as an example of “[u]nlawful gender-based discrimination”:
Failing To Use an Individual’s Preferred Name or Pronoun
The NYCHRL requires employers and covered entities to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun and title (e.g., Ms./Mrs.) regardless of the individual’s sex assigned at birth, anatomy, gender, medical history, appearance, or the sex indicated on the individual’s identification.
Most individuals and many transgender people use female or male pronouns and titles. Some transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir.
Such “discrimination” is subject to a $125,000 fine — $250,000 if your offense is found to be “willful, wanton, or malicious.” What’s more, these fines are just the icing on the cake, according to the guidance:
These penalties are in addition to the other remedies available to people who successfully resolve or prevail on claims under the NYCHRL, including, but not limited to, back and front pay, along with other compensatory and punitive damages. The Commission may consider the lack of an adequate anti-discrimination policy as a factor in determining liability, assessing damages, and mandating certain affirmative remedies.
Now, it’s never pleasant to be misgendered by strangers or your peers. And even seemingly innocuous blunders can take a toll on transgender people, particularly when they are frequent and deliberate.
However, as Volokh’s piece notes, these fines amount to forced speech. “We can’t be required to even display a license plate that says ‘Live Free or Die’ on our car, if we object to the message; that’s what the court held in Wooley v. Maynard (1978),” Volokh notes. “But New York is requiring people to actually say words that convey a message of approval of the view that gender is a matter of self-perception rather than anatomy.”
Mind you, nothing is stopping a transgender or gender-fluid individuals from defining and expressing their identities in whichever ways they like. But fining someone potentially in excess of $250,000 for failing to verbally affirm someone else’s actual or perceived sex/gender — with pronouns as far-ranging as “ve,” “ey,” “per,” “fae,” or any other word an individual might prefer — is bringing our politically correct moment to new and almost certainly unconstitutional heights.