A Pennsylvania
court on Thursday ruled that Allentown can have an
ordinance protecting residents from discrimination in
housing or employment matters because of their gender
identity or sexual orientation.
The city's powers under its 1996 home-rule
charter empower it to police discrimination, a
three-judge commonwealth court panel said in reversing
a Lehigh County judge. The county judge had sided in June
2004 with four landlords who had challenged the law.
Commonwealth court judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer
said home-rule law restrictions on regulating business
did not prevent the city from adopting the ordinance
against gay bias, as the county judge had ruled. The
ordinance had remained in place while the appeal was pending.
Home-rule charters generally give cities greater
power to govern themselves. Jubelirer noted the irony
that in the case of antidiscrimination ordinances, a
small city without home rule would have automatically
withstood the landlords' legal attack. "Had Allentown
not adopted home rule, which is designed to give a
municipality broad powers, the trial court would have
upheld the city's authority to enact this ordinance,"
she wrote.
The decision relied heavily on a December ruling
by the state supreme court that allowed Philadelphia
to extend worker benefits to same-sex partners of city employees.
Randall L. Wenger, the lawyer for Allentown
landlords Gerry Hartman, John Lapinski, Robert
Roycroft, and Debbie Roycroft, said they had not decided
whether to appeal further. He said Jubelirer's opinion
employed "an outcome-based rationale." "I think it's
difficult for the judiciary to closely follow legal
precedent and closely follow statutes if it means they
have to make a decision that would appear that they
don't respect homosexuals as a group," Wenger said.
The landlords opposed the ordinance because of
their Christian moral beliefs about homosexuality, he
said. Dan Anders, who represented the city, said the
Philadelphia case established that cities, under their
police powers, are allowed to have ordinances that fight the
effects of discrimination.
Home-rule restrictions on business regulation
only limit how businesses can be forced to take
certain actions, he said, whereas the antibias
ordinance was a prohibition on certain behavior. "It's not a
duty or an obligation put upon employers; it's a
protection for the citizens of the city," he said.
(AP)