1975 Minneapolis Non-Discrimination Ordinance

In December of 1975, the Minneapolis City Council passed the first non-discrimination protections covering trans and gender-non-conforming people in American history. Approved with little fanfare as a slight change to the city’s existing gay rights ordinance, it reflected collaboration among moderate and radical gay rights activists, transsexual women, and legislators across the political spectrum.

Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, Minneapolis became a hotbed of gay liberation and lesbian feminist organizing, as well as a center of trans life in the Upper Midwest. The University of Minnesota’s gender clinic brought transsexual women to the city and increased their visibility;  gay and lesbian activists founded groups like FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression), Gay House, and the Lesbian Resource Center. In 1972 and 1973, gay activists swarmed the precinct caucuses of the Democratic Farmer-Labor party (as well as the party’s statewide convention in Mankato) in the hopes of electing pro-gay candidates to municipal offices in the Twin Cities and advancing a gay rights platform.

In this environment, two gay activists with opposing political strategies lobbied the City of Minneapolis to add gays and lesbians to its non-discrimination ordinance. Stephen Endean, moderate and subdued in his affect, founded the Minnesota Committee for Gay Rights (MCGR). He lobbied councilmembers nearly every day, building a name for himself by pushing gay rights at City Hall and the State Capitol. Simultaneously, Jack Baker—an attorney by training and a gay liberation activist—organized with transsexual women, other gay activists, and sympathetic social service providers to craft legal language that would protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. 

The Minneapolis city elections of 1973 had reorganized the council from a 7-6 Republican majority to a 12-1 split in favor of the DFL. This almost entirely new council was elected alongside a new mayor: the liberal Albert Hofstede. Hofstede replaced Charles Stenvig, a Minneapolis police officer known for his conservative, law-and-order politics.

Responding to Endean’s persistent lobbying, a group of five councilmembers quickly proposed amendments to Chapter 945 of the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances in February of 1974. The revisions banned discrimination on the basis of “affectional or sexual preference”—the language Baker and his collaborators had developed. 

Referred to committee, the amendments were debated in public hearings. Opponents feared that gay rights protections would permit child sexual abuse or force landlords to rent rooms to gays. Gays and lesbians, meanwhile, testified as to the necessity of the amendments, describing their varied experiences of discrimination. The committee approved the amendments and sent them back to the full council, where they passed unanimously with one abstention and two absences on March 29.

It didn’t take long, however, for local trans activists to realize that the protections were not sufficient. Laura,* a prominent activist among local trans women who had been active in gay liberation organizing for years and had directly lobbied councilmembers, got word from the City Attorney’s Office that the ordinance would not apply to transsexuals. At some point that year, she and others drafted language that would cover transsexuals and other visibly gender-non-conforming people.

While it remains unclear exactly how this language came to be, it was almost certainly written by some combination of Laura, Baker and/or other radical gay activists, Ward 2 councilmember Tom Johnson, and/or staff at the City Attorney’s Office, and/or the state legislature. It extended coverage to people “having or projecting a self-image not associated with [their] biological maleness or [their] biological femaleness,” broadening the definition of “affectional or sexual preference.”

Somewhat surprisingly, this first-in-the-nation civil rights protection was slipped in almost completely under the radar. Following former Mayor Stenvig’s re-election in 1975 and the coinciding election of several conservative councilmembers, the outgoing council passed ordinances strengthening its authority over the city’s Civil Rights Commission, fearing that Stenvig’s pick to lead it, Richard Parker, was too right-wing. Passed on the next-to-last day of Hofstede’s mayoral term (until his re-election two years later,) the package included the new, trans-inclusive definition of “affectional or sexual preference.” But it was overshadowed in the press by the drama around Parker and garnered little immediate public outcry.

The ordinance came under threat repeatedly over the ensuing half-decade. A union representing city employees raised objections, and the council received proposals to remove public accommodations protections and trans-inclusive language. Ultimately, though, it was spared the fate of St. Paul’s contemporaneous ordinance, which was rescinded overwhelmingly in a 1978 referendum. The Minneapolis ordinance remains on the books as the oldest law banning discrimination against trans and gender-non-conforming people in the United States.

*Author’s note: “Laura” is a pseudonym. As of this writing, Laura lives a private life and does not wish to be identified by name in published writing, though she is named in a number of academic and non-academic history texts dating back to the 1990s.