All right, we will call to order committee of the whole for September 22nd.

And first I'll move to approve the minutes of the September 12th meeting without the necessity of a reading.

Second.

Motion's been made and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

And that motion passes.

And I'll move to approve the minutes of the September 15th Committee of the Whole without the necessity of a reading.

Second.

Motion's been made and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none.

All those in favor?

Aye.

And that motion passes.

Okay.

So that brings us to we have a couple things of substance.

The first one that we're gonna dig into is the resolution, resolution 2025 45 regarding the gender freedom policy.

And uh earlier today we had a couple different versions going around.

We had some help from folks um in the community, um, from some of our community organizations, and uh and feedback from the law department as well.

So the most recent uh version was sent to council members, and uh believe the council clerk's gonna be putting it up on the screen uh when we get ready to talk about that.

Um first I wanna um turn it over to uh my co-sponsor uh councilperson Streiebig to make some opening remarks.

Thank you.

With continued attacks and blame incorrectly placed on the trans community, Delphine Lenou, a spokesperson for the human rights campaign, recently condemned U.S.

Representative Ronnie Jackson, Republican of Texas, and Trump's former White House physician on his remarks.

They said trans people are part of the fabric of society and just trying to live our lives.

And we don't deserve to have self-serving politicians using us as a political punching bag in service to their political ambitions.

They continued.

Ronnie Jackson, the man who was exposed for doling out amphetamines to White House staff, like Candy when he was Donald Trump's physician, should keep his disgusting and malevolent thoughts about transgender people to himself.

It is a derelict of his duty as a public servant to spread hateful lies about us, especially as escalating anti-hate nationally puts people in harm's way.

Instead of bringing people together, this rhetoric serves simply to drive more hate and division.

Texas deserves better.

And I agree.

Ohioans deserve better, and Lakewoodites deserve better.

With our home rule authority limited and shrinking under the Republican controlled state house, State House, we can still identify our priorities and commitments to keeping Lakewood a diverse and welcoming community.

With this resolution and administrative policy, I want to give all the protections and support as legally as possible to my trans neighbors, community drag performers, and our city employees.

Thank you, Councilmember Street Big.

Um, and thank you for co-sponsoring this with me.

Appreciate it.

Um first I want to introduce uh we have some uh guests with us tonight who are experts in this field.

So um first is I'll just go in this order, uh, is Dar Akinson, the executive director for TransO, and then um Elizabeth Katovich, is that how I say it?

No.

Kitavich?

Oh, okay, all right.

Uh lead advocacy coordinator for the LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland, and Sean McCann, policy strategist for ACLU of Ohio.

Okay.

And um the three of them have been helpful um as we've been working on uh this resolution and policy um and running things through their organizations to make sure um that we haven't missed anything or that we're being as accurate and thoughtful as possible.

Um and then I also want to mention uh recognize I'm sure we have some members of DSA in the audience who also contributed some language in the resolution as well.

Um and then we will definitely have time for public comment.

So if you're here for public comment, thank you for being here, and we'll make sure we get to that as well.

Um so first I will um ask if any of our guests have some opening comments you'd like to make.

All right.

Is that oh there we go?

Okay.

Yeah.

So President Keppel and members of the committee, thanks so much for having the three of us here.

And we had discussed maybe giving some context about where we stand with respect to the litigation that our organization is bringing against the state uh to um strike down House Bill 68, which of course put into place Ohio's gender affirming care ban, and I can just weigh in on that quickly just for context for the room.

Um many in the room might know that the Ohio Supreme Court recently accepted the case after the state appealed a favorable decision uh for our plaintiffs from the 10th district, the the Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals.

So the Ohio Supreme Court essentially said, yes, state of Ohio, we will hear your appeal of this decision that ruled that HP 68 was unconstitutional after if uh folks might remember the trial court uh where where the process started ruled in favor of the state.